When that mysterious letter from Percy came, although it caused his parents considerable anxiety, yet it never once occurred that any coldness on their part towards Lord Alphingham could occasion Caroline any pain.  Percy wrote with a degree of eloquent earnestness that could not be resisted, and guarded as his information and caution was, Mr. Hamilton determined implicitly to abide by it.  The young man wrote what Annie had informed Miss Malison; that he had heard from more than one quarter of Lord Alphingham’s marked attentions to his sister, that he had even been congratulated on the brilliant alliance Caroline was about to make.  He did not, he could not believe that such was the case, he said, for he should then have heard it from his parents, but he conjured his father, however casual the Viscount’s attentions might be, to withdraw Caroline entirely from them.

“I know well,” he wrote.  “Father, as you value my sister’s future peace, expose her not to his many fascinations.  If he has endeavoured to win her heart, if he has paid her marked attentions, he is a villain!  I dare not be more explicit, I am pledged to silence, and only to you, my dear father, and on such an emergency, am I privileged to write thus much.  Desire Caroline to give him no more encouragement, however slight; but do not tell even this, it may not only alarm her, but be imparted perhaps to her friend, as young ladies are fond of doing.  You have once said I never deceived you; father, trust me now, this is no jest; my sister’s happiness is too dear to me.  Break off all connection with Lord Alphingham.  I give no credit to the rumours I have heard, for your letters this season bade me hope Lord St. Eval would have been my sister’s choice.  His departure from England has dispelled these visions; but yet Caroline’s affections cannot have been given to Lord Alphingham without your or my mother’s knowledge.  Again I implore you, associate no more with him, he is not worthy of my father’s friendship.”

Mysterious as this was, yet both Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton knew Percy too well to imagine he would write thus without strong cause.  The suspicions and almost unconscious prejudice entertained towards him by Mrs. Hamilton received confirmation by this letter, and she was pleased that her husband determined no longer to encourage his intimacy.  Percy wrote, if he had paid Caroline marked attentions, 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.