eming sensible that Caroline had been wronged too, expressing her fear
that her father might believe her an accomplice in Jasper's plot, and
refuse her the means to live apart from the wretch; upon whom she heaped
every epithet that just indignation could suggest to a feeble mind. The
latter part of the letter, blurred and blotted, was incoherent, almost
raving. In fact Matilda was then seized by the mortal illness which
hurried her to her grave. To the Marquess much of this letter was
extremely uninteresting--much of it quite incomprehensible. He could not
see why it should so overpoweringly affect his wife. Only those passages
which denounced a scheme to frustrate some marriage meditated by Mr.
Darrell made him somewhat uneasy, and appeared to him to demand an
explanation. But Caroline, in the anguish to which she awakened,
forestalled his inquiries. To her but two thoughts were present--how she
had wronged Darrell--how ungrateful and faithless she must seem to him;
and in the impulse of her remorse, and in the childlike candour of her
soul, artlessly, ingenuously, she poured out her feelings to the husband
she had taken as counsellor and guide, as if seeking to guard all her
sorrow for the past from a sentiment that might render her less loyal
to the responsibilities which linked her future to another's. A man of
sense would have hailed in so noble a confidence (however it might have
pained him for the time) a guarantee for the happiness and security of
his whole existence. He would have seen how distinct from that ardent
love which in Caroline's new relation of life would have bordered upon
guilt and been cautious as guilt against disclosing its secrets, was the
infantine, venerating affection she had felt for a man so far removed
from her by years and the development of intellect--an affection which
a young husband, trusted with every thought, every feeling, might
reasonably hope to eclipse. A little forbearance, a little of delicate
and generous tenderness, at that moment, would have secured to Lord
Montfort the warm devotion of a grateful heart, in which the grief that
overflowed was not for the irreplaceable loss of an earlier lover, but
the repentant shame for wrong and treachery to a confiding friend.

But it is in vain to ask from any man that which is not in him! Lord
Montfort listened with sullen, stolid displeasure. That Caroline should
feel the slightest pain at any cause which had cancelled her engagement