Already he had been deceived; and while every softened feeling struggled for mastery in the mother's bosom, the father stood ready to judge and to condemn, fiercely conquering every rising emotion that swelled within.

There was even more lofty majesty in the carriage of her Grace, as she carefully closed the drawing-room door behind her, and slowly advanced towards Mrs.Hamilton; a cold, severe, unbending expression in every feature, that struck terror to the hearts of both Emmeline and Ellen, whose innocent festivity was indeed now rudely checked.
"Mrs.Hamilton," the Duchess said, and the grave and sad accents of her voice caused the anxious mother hastily to raise her head, and gaze inquiringly in her face, "to my especial care you committed your child.
I promised to guard her as my own, and on that condition alone you entrusted her to me; I alone, therefore, restore her to you, thank God, unscathed.

I make no apology for this strange and apparently needless intrusion at this late hour; deceived as I have been, my house was no longer a fitting home for your daughter, and not another night could I retain her, when my judgment told me her father's watchful guardianship alone could protect her from the designing arts of one, of whom but very little is known, and that little not such as would recommend him to my favour.

You, too, have been deceived, cruelly deceived, by that weak, infatuated girl.

Had you been aware that Lord Alphingham was her secretly favoured lover, that the coldness with which she ever treated him in public, the encouragement of another, were but to conceal from you and her father her attachment to him, you would not have consented to her joining a party of which he was a member.