that day, at Richmond, when
he discovered that the very secrets of his heart were made subject of
confidential conversation with this man, he had doubted it no longer.
Then he had gone to her, and his reception proved to him that his
doubts had been too well founded--his certainty only too sure. And so
he had parted with her--as we all know.

But now he began to doubt his doubts--to be less certain of his
certainty. That she did not much love Sir Henry, that was very
apparent; that she could not listen to his slightest word without
emotion--that, too, he could perceive; that Adela conceived that
she still loved him, and that his presence there was therefore
dangerous--that also had been told to him. Was it then possible that
he, loving this woman as he did--having never ceased in his love for
one moment, having still loved her with his whole heart, his whole
strength--that he had flung her from him while her heart was still
his own? Could it be that she, during their courtship, should have
seemed so cold and yet had loved him?

A thousand times he had reproached her in his heart for being
worldly; but now the world seemed to have no charms for her. A
thousand times he had declared that she cared only for the outward
show of things, but these outward shows were now wholly indifferent
to her. That they in no degree contributed to her happiness, or even
to her contentment, that was made manifest enough to him.

And then these thoughts drove him wild, and he began to ask himself
whether there could be yet any comfort in the fact that she had
loved him, and perhaps loved him still. The motives by which men are
actuated in their conduct are not only various, but mixed. As Bertram
thought in this way concerning Lady Harcourt--the Caroline Waddington
that had once belonged to himself--he proposed to himself no scheme
of infamy, no indulgence of a disastrous love, no ruin for her whom
the world now called so fortunate; but he did think that, if she
still loved him, it would be pleasant to sit and talk with her;
pleasant to feel some warmth in her hand; pleasant that there should
be some confidence in her voice. And so he resolved--but, no, there
was no resolve; but he allowed it to come to pass that his intimacy
in Eaton Square should not be dropped.

And then he bethought himself of the part which his friend Harcourt
had played in this matter, and speculated as to how that pleasant
fellow had cheated him out of his wife. W