me if _I_ was going in for public life
that I'd grown so particularly unamusing. We're always unamusing to one
woman if we're thinking at all about another.

"Do you know who was at the House to-night, Earlscourt, to hear your
speech?" I asked him, as I met him, a couple of hours afterwards, in one
of the passages, as he was leaving the House. He had altered much in
eight months; he stooped a little from his waist; he looked worn, and
his lips were pale. Men said his stamina was not equal to his brain;
physicians, that he gave himself too much work and too little sleep. I
knew he was more wrapped in public life than ever; that in his place in
the government he worked unwearyingly, and that he found time in spare
moments for intellectual recreation that would have sufficed for their
life's study for most men. Still, I thought possibly there might be a
weakness still clinging round his heart, though he never alluded to it;
a passion which, though he appeared to have crushed it out, might be
sapping his health more than all his work for the nation.

"Do you mean any one in particular? Persigny said he should attend, but
I did not see him."

"No, I meant among the ladies. Beatrice Boville was in the seat next
me." I had no earthly business to speak of her so abruptly, for when I
had seen him for the first time after he left the Bad when Parliament
met that February, he had forbidden me ever to mention her name to him,
and no allusion to her had ever passed his lips. The worn, stern
gravity, that had become his habitual expression, changed for a moment;
bullet-proof he might be, but my arrow had shot in through the chain
links of his armor; a look of unutterable pain, eagerness, anxiety,
passion, passed over his face; but, whatever he felt, he subdued it,
though his voice was broken as he answered me:--

"Once for all, I bade you never speak that name to me. Without being
forbidden, I should have thought your own feeling, your own delicacy,
might--"

"Have checked me? O, hang it, Earlscourt, listen one second without
shutting a fellow up. I never broached the subject before, by your
desire; but, now I have once broken the ice, I must ask you one
question: Are you sure you judged the girl justly? are you sure you were
not too quick to slan--"

He pressed his hand on his chest and breathed heavily as I spoke, but he
wouldn't let me finish.

"That is enough. Would any man sacrifice what he held dearest wantonly
and wit