What was it to her if St.Eval married Louisa Manvers?
then studiously she thought only on the Viscount, and the situation with regard to him in which she was placed, till her head ached with the intensity of its reflections.
On entering the drawing-room she found, as she had anticipated, Lord Alphingham the centre of a brilliant coterie, and for the space of a minute her heart throbbed and her cheek flushed.

He bowed respectfully as she appeared, but with distant courtesy; yet she fancied the flow of his eloquence was for a moment arrested, and his glance, subdued yet so mournfully beseeching, spoke volumes.

Neither at dinner nor during the whole of that evening did he pay her more than ordinary attention; scarcely that.

But those silent signals of intelligence had even greater power than words; for they nattered her self-love, by clearly proving, that courted, admired, as he could not but feel he was by all around him, his noble hostess perhaps excepted, yet all was as nothing, now that her favour had been so strangely and suddenly withdrawn.

His tone, his manner, as he presented to her a note from Annie, of which he had been the bearer, strengthened this illusion; and Caroline, as she retired to rest, felt more and more convinced they were indeed mutually and devotedly attached, and that her obedience to her parents could not weigh against the duty she owed herself, the love he had evinced for her.