it was to Caroline.

The attentions of Eugene St. Eval to Miss Hamilton continued as
unintermitting as they were respectful the whole of that night; and
Caroline, if she did not encourage, certainly forbade them not. She
listened to him with more attention; she appeared more animated with him
than with any of her other partners, one perhaps, alone excepted, and
yet she had taught her young heart to receive impressions to his
prejudice, which Annie never permitted an opportunity to pass without
carefully instilling. Why did she then permit his attentions? She knew
not; while listening to his voice, there was a fascination about him she
could not resist, but in her solitary hours she studiously banished his
image to give place to one whom, by the representations of Annie, she
persuaded herself that she loved alone.

Genuine, indeed, had been the enjoyment of Caroline Hamilton, from the
first moment she had entered the ball-room; but if it could be
heightened, it was when, about the middle of the evening, Lord
Alphingham entered. A party of gay young men instantly surrounded him,
but breaking from them all, he attached himself the greater part of the
night to Mr. Hamilton. Only two quadrilles he danced with Caroline, but
they were enough to aid the schemes of Annie. She was at hand to excite,
to an almost painful degree, the mind of her friend, to speak in
rapturous praise of Lord Alphingham, to chain him now and then to her
side, and yet so contrive, that the whole of his conversation was with
Caroline; and yet the conduct of Annie Grahame had been such that night
as rather to excite the admiration than the censure of Mr. Hamilton.
Playfully he combated the prejudice of his wife, who as sportively owned
that Miss Grahame's conduct in society was different to that she had
anticipated; but her penetrative mind felt not the more at ease when she
thought on the friendship that subsisted between Annie and her child.

"Am I dreaming, or is it Mrs. Hamilton I again behold?" exclaimed an
elderly gentleman, as she came forward, and hastily advancing, seized
both her hands, and pressed them with unfeigned warmth and pleasure,
which greeting Mrs. Hamilton as cordially returned. He was a very old
friend of her father's, and had attained by promotion his present high
rank of Admiral of the Blue, but had been the first captain under whose
orders her lamented brother sailed. Very many, therefore, were the
associations that filled her