Go, your secret is safe.

How dare you speak of inflicting misery on your parents?
Must not hypocrisy lurk in every word, when wilfully, recklessly, you have already abused their confidence and insulted their love?
much more you cannot do." She paused, as if in expectation of a reply, but none came.

Caroline's breaking heart had lost that proud spirit which, a few days before, would have called a haughty answer from her lips.

She writhed beneath those stern unpitying accents, which perhaps in such a moment of remorseful agony might have been spared, but she replied not; and, after a brief silence, the Duchess again spoke.
"Caroline, answer me.

What has caused this sudden change in your intentions?
What has chanced between you and Lord Alphingham to demand this sudden longing for home?
What impulse bids you thus elude him ?" "The memory of my mother's love," and Caroline raised her head, and pushing back her disordered hair, gazed upon the face of the Duchess with an expression of suffering few could have looked upon unmoved.
"You are right, I have deceived my too indulgent parents, I have abused their confidence, insulted their love; but I cannot, oh, I cannot still those principles within me which they have implanted.