To Miss Tremenhere? Oh, yes, I know the story."

"And how badly she behaved to him, receiving the attention of another
man, absolutely while she was engaged to him."

"She was very pretty;--but a flighty, inconstant little girl. I felt
that George had had a great escape."

"But such was the story. Well;--he told it me. He told it before he
had thought of me. We were together and had become intimate; and out
of the full heart the mouth speaks."

"I can understand that he should have told it you."

"He did not think of loving me then. Well;--he told me his story, but
I kept mine to myself."

"That was natural,--then."

"But, when he came to me with the other story and asked me to love
him, was I to give him back his own tale and tell him the same thing
of myself? I too have had a lover, and I have--jilted him, if you
please to call it so. Was I to tell him that?"

"It would hardly have been true, I think."

"It would have been true,--true to the letter," said Cecilia,
determined that Sir Francis Geraldine's lie should not prevail at
this moment. "I had done to Sir Francis just what the girl had done
to your brother. I was guided by other motives and had, I think,
behaved properly. Was I to tell it to him then?"

"Why not?"

"His own story, back again? I could not do it, and then, after that,
from time to time the occasions have gone by. Words have been said by
him which have made it impossible. Twenty times I have determined to
do it, and twenty times the opportunity has been lost. I was obliged
to tell this woman not to mention it in his presence."

"He must know it."

"I wish he did."

"He is a man who will not bear to be kept in the dark on such a
question."

"I know it. I have read his character and I know it."

"You cannot know him as I do," said Lady Grant. "Though you are his
wife you have not been so long enough to know him; how true he is,
how affectionate, how honest; but yet how jealous! Were I to say that
he is unforgiving I should belie him. Without many thoughts he could
forgive the man who had robbed him of his fortune, or his health.
But it is hard for him to forgive that which he considers to be an
offence against his self-love."

"I know it all."

"The longer he is kept in the dark the deeper will be the wound. Of
such a man it is impossible to say what he suspects. He will not
think that you have loved him the less or that you are less true to
him; but there will be something th