will come?
Will it be to me, or to her, or to Harcourt?"

"No injury, no real injury--I am sure of that. But may not
unhappiness come of it? Does it seem to you that she is happy?"

"Happy! Which of us is happy? Which of us is not utterly wretched?
She is as happy as you are? and Sir Henry, I have no doubt, is as
happy as I am."

"In what you say, Mr. Bertram, you do me injustice; I am not
unhappy."

"Are you not? then I congratulate you on getting over the troubles
consequent on a true heart."

"I did not mean in any way to speak of myself; I have cares, regrets,
and sorrows, as have most of us; but I have no cause of misery which
I cannot assuage."

"Well, you are fortunate; that is all I can say."

"But Caroline I can see is not happy; and, Mr. Bertram, I fear that
your coming here will not make her more so."

She had said her little word, meaning it so well. But perhaps she had
done more harm than good. He did not come again to Eaton Square till
after she was gone; but very shortly after that he did so.

Adela had seen that short, whispered conversation between Lady
Harcourt and Bertram--that moment, as it were, of confidence; and so,
also, had Sir Henry; and yet it had been but for a moment.

"Lady Harcourt," Bertram had said, "how well you do this sort of
thing!"

"Do I?" she answered. "Well, one ought to do something well."

"Do you mean to say that your excellence is restricted to this?"

"Pretty nearly; such excellence as there is."

"I should have thought--" and then he paused.

"You are not coming to reproach me, I hope," she said.

"Reproach you, Lady Harcourt! No; my reproaches, silent or expressed,
never fall on your head."

"Then you must be much altered;" and as she said these last words, in
what was hardly more than a whisper, she saw some lady in a distant
part of the room to whom some attention might be considered to be
due, and rising from her seat she walked away across the room. It was
very shortly after that Adela had spoken to him.

For many a long and bitter day, Bertram had persuaded himself that
she had not really loved him. He had doubted it when she had first
told him so calmly that it was necessary that their marriage should
be postponed for years; he had doubted it much when he found her,
if not happy, at least contented under that postponement; doubt had
become almost certainty when he learnt that she discussed his merits
with such a one as Henry Harcourt; but on