en with it?"

"Take the rule, if you please," she said.

"And about the heart?" he asked.

He should have been more of a rascal or less. Seeing how very much of
a rascal he was already, I think it would have been better that he
should have been more,--that he should have been able to content his
spirit with the simple acquisition of her money, and that he should
have been free from all those remains of a finer feeling which made
him desire her love also. But it was not so. It was necessary for
his comfort that she should, at any rate, say she loved him. "Well,
Alice, and what about the heart?" he asked again.

"I would so much rather talk about politics, George," said she.

The cicatrice began to make itself very visible in his face, and the
debonair manner was fast vanishing. He had fixed his eyes upon her,
and had inserted his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat.

"Alice, that is not quite fair," he said.

"I do not mean to be unfair."

"I am not so sure of that. I almost think that you do mean it. You
have told me that you intend to become my wife. If, after that, you
wilfully make me miserable, will not that be unfair?"

"I am not making you miserable,--certainly not wilfully."

"Did that letter which you wrote to me from Westmoreland mean
anything?"

"George, do not strive to make me think that it meant too much."

"If it did, you had better say so at once."

But Alice, though she would have said so had she dared, made no
answer to this. She sat silent, turning her face away from his gaze,
longing that the meeting might be over, and feeling that she had lost
her own self-respect.

"Look here, Alice," he said, "I find it very hard to understand you.
When I look back over all that has passed between us, and to that
other episode in your life, summing it all up with your conduct to me
at present, I find myself at a loss to read your character."

"I fear I cannot help you in the reading of it."

"When you first loved me;--for you did love me. I understood that
well enough. There is no young man who in early life does not read
with sufficient clearness that sweetest morsel of poetry.--And when
you quarrelled with me, judging somewhat harshly of my offences, I
understood that also; for it is the custom of women to be hard in
their judgement on such sins. When I heard that you had accepted the
offer made to you by that gentleman in Cambridgeshire, I thought that
I understood you still,--knowing how