prised myself, and I knew that you would be. But what was I
to do?"

"I think you have been very wise," said Lord George.

"Yes, but you think I have been heartless. I can see it in your eyes
and hear it in your voice. Perhaps I was heartless;--but then I was
bound to be wise. A man may have a profession before him. He may do
anything. But what has a girl to think of? You say that money is
comfortable."

"Certainly it is."

"How is she to get it, if she has not got it of her own, like dear
Mary?"

"You do not think that I have blamed you."

"But even though you have not, yet I must excuse myself to you," she
said with energy, bending forward from her sofa towards him. "Do you
think that I do not know the difference?"

"What difference?"

"Ah, you shouldn't ask. I may hint at it, but you shouldn't ask. But it
wouldn't have done, would it?" Lord George hardly understood what it
was that wouldn't have done; but he knew that a reference was being
made to his former love by the girl he had loved; and, upon the whole,
he rather liked it. The flattery of such intrigues is generally
pleasant to men, even when they cannot bring their minds about quick
enough to understand all the little ins and outs of the woman's
manoeuvres. "It is my very nature to be extravagant. Papa has brought
me up like that. And yet I had nothing that I could call my own. I had
no right to marry any one but a rich man. You said just now you
couldn't afford to hunt."

"I never could."

"And I couldn't afford to have a heart. You said just now, too, that
money is very comfortable. There was a time when I should have found it
very, very comfortable to have had a fortune of my own."

"You have plenty now."

She wasn't angry with him, because she had already found out that it is
the nature of men to be slow. And she wasn't angry with him, again,
because, though he was slow, yet also was he evidently gratified.
"Yes," she said, "I have plenty now. I have secured so much. I couldn't
have done without a large income; but a large income doesn't make me
happy. It's like eating and drinking. One has to eat and drink, but yet
one doesn't care very much about it. Perhaps you don't regret hunting
very much?"

"Yes I do, because it enables a man to know his neighbours."

"I know that I regret the thing I couldn't afford."

Then a glimmer of what she meant did come across him, and he blushed.
"Things will not always turn out as they are wanted," he