Mrs. Hamilton’s charitable nature, heightened also by Herbert’s unchanging regard, would not permit her to credit the tales that were abroad concerning him.  She regretted his determination, for it appeared like wilfully casting away the friendship and interest of those who were likely to do him service.  She guessed not the real motive of his resolve, if she had, she would have honoured even as she now regarded him with pity; but almost for the first time the penetration of Mrs. Hamilton was at fault.  Emmeline’s feelings, even as those of Arthur, were successfully concealed; from her brother Herbert she had first heard of Myrvin’s intentions.  She listened in silence, but her lip quivered and her cheek grew pale; and when she sought the solitude of her own room, tears relieved her, and enabled her to act up to her determination, cost what it might, to be the same playful, merry girl before her parents as was her wont, not that she meant in any way to deceive them, but she had learned that she loved Arthur Myrvin, and knew also that to become his wife, situated as they were, was a thing impossible.

Had Emmeline really been the romantic girl so generally believed, she would now have done all in her power to overcome every difficulty, by regarding poverty as the only criterion of true love; she would have fed her imagination with visions of herself and Arthur; combating manfully against evil, so they shared it together; she would have robed poverty with an imaginary halo, and welcomed it, rejoicing to become his wife, but such were not her feelings.  The careful hand of maternal love had done its work, and though enthusiasm and romance were generally the characteristics most clearly visible, yet there was a fund of good and sober sense within, that few suspected, and of which even her parents knew not the extent, and that plain sense effectually prevented her ever becoming the victim of imagination.

Emmeline loved Arthur Myrvin, loved him with an intensity, a fervour, which only those who possess a similar enthusiastic temperament can understand.  She felt convinced she was not indifferent to him; but agony as it was to her young heart to part from him, in all probability for ever, yet she honoured his resolution; she knew, she felt its origin, and she rejoiced that he went of his own accord, ere their secret feelings were discovered.

Notwithstanding all her endeavours, her spirits flagged, and at the conclusion of the Oakwood festivities she appeared so pale and thin, that Mrs. Hamilton consulted Mr. Maitland.  Emmeline had resisted, as much as she could without failure of duty, all appeal to medical advice, and it was with trembling she awaited his opinion; when, however, it was given, she rejoiced that he had been consulted, for had her parents entertained any suspicions of the real cause, it would have completely banished them.  He said she was merely suffering from the effects of a lengthened period of excitement, that quiet and regularity of pursuits would in all probability restore both health and spirits.  A smile, faint and apparently without meaning, played round her lips as her mother repeated what he had said, and playfully declared she should most strictly adhere to his advice.