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 and the hopes of D'Alembert died away—hopes, however, which revived on Philippe's declaring his resolution of going back to Italy, when he had been but a few months returned from it. Something more than a mere inclination to travel he was convinced attracted him so immediately from home; and he gave the necessary instructions to Lafroy to watch him narrowly.

Lafroy suspected an attachment between him and Lady Elenora Dunlere; and his suspicions were confirmed by Lord Philippe's passing that time at the castle of her father, which, on quitting his own home, he had declared he would spend in Italy. To know the nature of the attachment, what kind of connexion it had formed, or was likely to form, between them, he laid himself out to gain the confidence of Blanche, with whose perfect knowledge of all that passed in the family he was acquainted. Ignorant, innocent, the very child of simplicity, Blanche was not long proof to his arti-