icult for me to explain myself"--and now she blushed
slightly--very slightly. "What I mean is this; I wish to be acquitted
by you of having had recourse to Mr. Harcourt on my own account--from
any partiality of my own." She almost rose in height as she stood
there before him, uttering these words in all her cold but beautiful
dignity. Whatever her sins might have been, he should not accuse her
of having dallied with another while her word and her troth had been
his. She had been wrong. She could not deny that he had justice on
his side--stern, harsh, bare justice--when he came there to her and
flung back her love and promises into her teeth. He had the right to
do so, and she would not complain. But he should not leave her till
he had acquitted her of the vile, missish crime of flirting with
another because he was absent. Seeing that he still hardly understood
her, she made her speech yet plainer.

"At the risk of being told again that I am unfeminine, I must explain
myself. Do you charge me with having allowed Mr. Harcourt to speak to
me as a lover?"

"No; I make no such charge. Now, I have no right to make any charge
on such a matter."

"No; should Mr. Harcourt be my lover now, that is my affair and his,
not yours. But had he been so then-- You owe it to me to say whether
among other sins, that sin also is charged against me?"

"I have charged and do charge nothing against you, but this--that you
have ceased to love me. And that charge will be made nowhere but in
my own breast. I am not a jealous man, as I think you might know.
What I have said to you here to-day has not come of suspicion. I have
thought no ill against you, and believed no ill against you beyond
that which you have yourself acknowledged. I find that you have
ceased to love me, and finding that, I am indifferent to whom your
love may be given." And so saying, he opened the door and went out;
nor did he ever again see Miss Waddington at Littlebath.

Some few minutes after he had left the room, Miss Baker entered it.
She had heard the sound of the front door, and having made inquiry
of the servant, had learned that their visitor had gone. Then she
descended to her own drawing-room, and found Caroline sitting upright
at the table, as though in grief she despised the adventitious aid
and every-day solace of a sofa. There was no tear in her eye, none as
yet; but it required no tears to tell her aunt that all was not well.
Judging by the face she looke