ons, or endeavoured to win her
heart, he was a villain, and he had done so, and Mrs. Hamilton could not
but feel sufficiently rejoiced at Caroline's apparent manner towards
him. Deceived as she had been, yet that her once honourable child should
so entirely forget the principles of her childhood, as to give him
secret encouragement, while her conduct in society rather bespoke
indifference and pride than pleasure, that Caroline could have been led
to act thus was a thing so morally impossible to Mrs. Hamilton, that she
had no hesitation whatever in complying with Percy's request, little
imagining that in doing so she placed an inseparable bar to her
regaining the confidence of her child, and widened more painfully the
breach between them.

Caroline's heart, on receiving her father's command to withdraw herself
by degrees entirely from Lord Alphingham, was wrung with many bitter and
contending feelings. At first she reproached herself for having thus
completely concealed her feelings, and, had she followed the impulse of
nature, she would at once have thrown herself on her mother's neck, and
there confessed all, that she loved him; that she had long done so, and
implore her not to check their intercourse without some more explicit
reason: but Annie's evil influence had been too powerful. She dreaded
her reproaches on this want of confidence in herself, or what was still
worse, her satirical smile at her ridiculous weakness, and then she
remembered her mother's displeasure at her former conduct, and dreaded a
renewal of the same coldness, perhaps even increased control. She
determined, therefore, to wait till she had seen Annie; and that
interview rendered her more miserable, excited still more her
indignation against her parents and brother, and strengthened the
feelings of devoted affection with which she fancied she regarded Lord
Alphingham. Annie's continued notes confirmed these feelings; under the
specious intention of soothing Caroline's wounded pride, it was very
easy for her to disguise her repeated insinuations of Mr. and Mrs.
Hamilton's injustice and caprice towards the Viscount, and tyranny
towards herself. The veil she had thrown over Caroline's sober judgment
became thicker and more blinding, and Caroline could sometimes scarcely
restrain even before her parents the indignation which so continually
filled her heart.

Mrs. Hamilton was ignorant of the communications that were so constantly
passing between An