, Helen."

"No, I dare say not. And _you_ have always known a great deal more about
it than anybody else. That I have always understood, Maurice."

Maurice looked very black, but he was silent.

"I am very glad I told her about the boudoir," continued Helen,
spitefully. "How mortified she must feel to think that it has all slipped
through her fingers and into mine. I do hope she will come up to the
house. I shall show her all over it; she will wish she had not been
such a fool!"

Maurice was looking at his wife with a singular expression.

"I begin to think you have a very bad heart, Helen," he said, with
a contempt in his voice that was very near akin to disgust.

She looked up, a little startled, and put her hand back, caressingly,
under his arm.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Maurice; I don't want to vex you. You
know very well how much I love you--and--and"--looking up with a little
smile into his face that was meant as a peace offering--"I suppose I am
jealous!"

"Suppose you wait to be jealous until I give you cause to be so,"
answered her husband, gravely and coldly, but not altogether unkindly,
for he meant to do his duty to her, God helping him, as far as he knew
how.

But all the way home he walked silently by her side, and wondered whether
the sacrifice he had made of his love to his duty had been, indeed, worth
it.

It had been hard for him, this first meeting with Vera. He had felt it
more than he had believed possible. Instinctively he had realized what
she must have suffered; and that her sufferings were utterly beyond his
power to console. It began to come into his mind that, meaning to deal
rightly by Helen, he had dealt cruelly and badly by Vera. He had
sacrificed the woman he loved to the woman he did not love.

Had it, indeed, been such a right and praiseworthy action on his part?
Maurice lost himself in speculation as to what would have happened had he
broken his faith to Helen, and allowed himself to follow the dictates of
his heart rather than those of his conscience.

That was what Vera had done for his sake; but what he had been unable to
do for hers.

There was a certain hardness about the man, a rigid sense of honour that
was almost a fault; for, if it be a virtue to cleave to truth and good
faith above everything, to swear to one's neighbour and disappoint him
not--even though it be to one's own hindrance--it is certainly not a fine
or noble thing to mistake tenderness for