but he said little or nothing about love. Once or twice he ventured
to tell her of some pretty girl that he met, of some adventure with a
laird's daughter; nay, insinuated laughingly that he had not escaped
from it quite heart-whole. Caroline answered his letter in the same
tone; told him, with excellent comedy, of the leading facts of life
in Littlebath; recommended him by all means to go back after the
laird's daughter; described the joy of her heart at unexpectedly
meeting Mr. M'Gabbery in the pump-room, and her subsequent
disappointment at hearing that there was now a Mrs. M'Gabbery. He had
married that Miss Jones, of whom the parental Potts had so strongly
disapproved. All this was very nice, very amusing, and very friendly.
But Bertram, as a lover, knew that he was not satisfied.

When he had done with the grouse and the laird's daughter he went
to Oxford, but he did not then go again to Littlebath. He went to
Oxford, and from thence to Arthur Wilkinson's parsonage. Here he
saw much of Adela; and consoled himself by talking with her about
Caroline. To her he did not conceal his great anger. While he was
still writing good-humoured, witty letters to his betrothed, he was
saying of her to Adela Gauntlet things harsh--harsher perhaps in that
they were true.

"I had devoted myself to her," he said. "I was working for her as a
galley-slave works, and was contented to do it. I would have borne
anything, risked anything, endured anything, if she would have borne
it with me. All that I have should have gone to shield her from
discomfort. I love her still, Miss Gauntlet; it is perhaps my misery
that I love her. But I can never love her now as I should have done
had she come to me then."

"How can I work now?" he said again. "I shall be called to the bar
of course; there is no difficulty in that; and may perhaps earn what
will make us decently respectable. But the spirit, the high spirit is
gone. She is better pleased that it should be so. She is intolerant
of enthusiasm. Is it not a pity, Miss Gauntlet, that we should be so
different?"

What could Adela say to him? Every word that he uttered was to her
a truth--a weary, melancholy truth; a repetition of that truth
which was devouring her own heart. She sympathized with him fully,
cordially, ardently. She said no word absolutely in dispraise of
Caroline; but she admitted, and at last admitted so often, that,
according to her thinking, Caroline was wrong.

"Wrong!" B