Before this answer reached Lady Hamlet Vernon, she had been in some degree prepared for the blow, for Mr. Foley, who was in town, on receiving the letter which had been intended for Lord Albert, instantly surmised the worst, and had proceeded with the utmost haste to Brighton.--There Lord Albert's answer found him and Lady Hamlet Vernon in all the dismay and terror which detection of so sinister an intrigue would naturally cause.
The arrival of Lord Albert was hourly looked for by them, as the sure consequence of what had taken place, in order to demand an explanation of the letter which had fallen into his hands; for Lady Hamlet Vernon was certain that she had written no other letter by that post except to himself and Mr. Foley, and felt, therefore, a conviction on the subject of his arrival, which was anticipated as a certainty: and although the necessity of the moment obliged Mr. Foley and Lady Hamlet Vernon to be in consultation together, a person was on the watch to apprise them of his approach, so that Mr. Foley's presence might not strengthen the suspicions already connected with his name.
Under these circumstances therefore, the arrival of a letter only was, at the moment, rather a relief; though it had been felt by the parties that there was more chance of Lord Albert's being still deceived, had he been exposed to the influence of Lady Hamlet Vernon's charms in a personal interview.--His letter was broken open in haste: the return of her own last unopened, which fell from the envelope, sufficiently foretold its purport. The messenger had departed after giving in the packet, with a brief announcement that there was no reply. It would be impossible to characterize all the feelings of disappointed passion, self-interest, hatred, and revenge, together with the mutual reproaches to which these gave birth between the detected actors of this infamous intrigue.
After giving way, however, to the first ebullitions of anger against each other, mutual recrimination, and all those scorpion-like feelings which are the consequences of a copartnery in guilt, the sense of necessity to secure self-preservation, and to shield themselves from public ignominy, made them both catch eagerly at the terms of secrecy implied in the latter sentence of Lord Albert's letter; and when Lady Hamlet was convinced that there was no hope of regaining him to her views, she felt the necessity of submission, and sheltering herself under such terms as the exigency of the case required. All love was banished from her breast by feelings of rage and shame at her detection; and with the heartlessness of an _intrigante_, she determined to put _bonne mine à mauvais jeu_, and boldly deny a guilt which she knew could be but covertly imputed to her. She wrote an answer, therefore, on the instant, to Lord Albert, couched in terms such as the offended feelings of a haughty woman would dictate. In her turn she cast off Lord Albert--"one for whose happiness she avowed that she had been ready to sacrifice every thing. But now she found that the very measures she had taken from pure devotion to himself had been made matter of accusation against her; measures easily explained, if an explanation had been solicited. It was he who had sought her affections, not she his; and when he thus rudely rejected a heart which he had taken pains to win, she could not but feel that she had escaped from that irretrievable ruin which must have followed her union with him." Having thus endeavoured to turn the tide of recrimination against Lord Albert, the feeling which at the moment pressed most urgently upon her was, as in the case of all criminal confederacies, to rid herself of the insufferable presence of the partner of her crime; and therefore pressing upon him the draft which had been intended originally to remove him to the continent, she placed it in his hands for the same purpose now, and in a few hours afterwards he had embarked for Dieppe.