“Mother, my injured mother, oh, do not, do not hate me!” she murmured, in a voice almost inarticulate.  “I deserve to be cast from your love, to lose your confidence for ever.  I have deceived you—­I—­” Sobs choked her utterance, and the grieving mother could only throw her arms around her child, and press her convulsively to her heart.  Anxiety, nearly equal to that of his wife, had been an inmate of Mr. Hamilton’s bosom as the Duchess’s voice reached his ear; but as he glanced on Caroline, a frown gathered on his brow.  He trembled involuntarily, for he felt assured it was imprudence, to give it the mildest term, in her conduct that called for this untimely visit, this strange return to her home.  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.  At my house he has received increased encouragement.  I marked them with a jealous eye, for I could not believe his attentions sanctioned either by you or Mr. Hamilton; but even my vigilance was at fault, for she had consented to sever every tie which bound her to her too indulgent parents, and fly with him to Scotland.  This night would have seen the accomplishment of their design.  Had one of my children behaved thus, it would have been less a matter of bewilderment to me than such conduct in a daughter of yours.  I have neglected to seek their confidence, their affection.  You