Her music book lay open on a piano forte in the breakfast parlour. A song which he had a few days before desired her to learn, as being one which particularly charmed him, seemed to have been just copied into it, and he fancied the notes and the writing were executed with more than her usual elegance. Under it was a little porte feuille of red morocco. Delamere took it up. It was untied; and two or three small tinted drawings fell out. He saw the likeness of Mrs. Stafford, done from memory; one yet more striking of his sister Augusta; and two or three unfinished resemblances of persons he did not know, touched with less spirit than the other two. A piece of silver paper doubled together enclosed another; he opened it—it was a drawing of himself, done with a pencil, and slightly tinged with a crayon; strikingly like; but it seemed unfinished, and somewhat effaced.

Though among so many other portraits, this could not be considered as a very flattering distinction, Delamere, on seeing it, was not master of his transports. He now believed Emmeline (whom he could never induce to own that her partiality for him exceeded the bounds of friendship) yet cherished in her heart a passion she would not avow.