admired and surrounded in any society, possibly people remarked
it--possibly our continued intimacy might have come round to Earlscourt,
specially as Lady Clive and Mrs Breloques abused me roundly, each a sa
mode, for countenancing that "abominable intrigante." I couldn't help
it, even if Earlscourt took exception at me for it. I knew the girl was
not to blame, and I took her part, and tried my best to tame the little
Pythoness into releasing me from my promise. But Beatrice was firm; had
she erred, no one would have acknowledged and atoned for it quicker, but
innocent and wrongly accused, she kept silent, coute que coute, and in
my heart I sympathized with her. Nothing stings so sharply, nothing is
harder to forgive, than injustice; and, knowing herself to be frank,
honorable, and open as the day, his charge of falsehood and deception
rankled in her only more keenly as time went on. Men ran after her like
mad; she had more of them about her than many beauties or belles. There
was a style, a charm, a something in her that sent beauties into the
shade, and by which, had she chosen, she could soon have replaced
Earlscourt. Still, it needed to be no Lavater to see, by the passionate
gleam of her eyes and the haughty pride on her brow, that Beatrice
Boville was not happy.

"Why _will_ you let pride and punctilio wreck your own life, Beatrice?"
I asked her, in a low tone, as we stood before one of Ed. Warren's
delicious bits of woodland in the Water-Color Exhibition, where we had
chanced to meet one day. "That he should have judged you as he did was
not unnatural. Think! how was it possible for him to guess your father
was your companion? Remember how very much circumstances were against
you."

"Had they been ten times more against me, a man who cared for me would
have believed in me, and stood by me, not condemned me on the first
suspicion. It was unchivalrous, ungenerous, unjust. I tell you, his
words are stamped into my memory forever. I shall never forgive them."

"Not even if you knew that he suffered as much and more than you do?"

She clinched her hands on the rolled-up catalogue with a passionate
gesture.

"No; because he _misjudged_ me. Anything else I would have pardoned,
though I am no patient Griselda, to put up tamely with any wrong; but
_that_ I never could--I never would!"

"I regret it, then. I thought you too warm and noble-hearted a woman to
retain resentment so long. I never blamed you in the first