nything in my power to make you so?"

"There can be nothing now in your power, Mr. Bertram." And as she
spoke she involuntarily put an emphasis on the now, which made her
words convey much more than she had intended.

"No," he said. "No. What can such a one as I do? What could I ever
have done? But say that you forgive me, Lady Harcourt."

"Let us both forgive," she whispered, and as she did so, she put out
her hand to him. "Let us both forgive. It is all that we can do for
each other."

"Oh, Caroline, Caroline!" he said, speaking hardly above his breath,
and with his eyes averted, but still holding her hand; or attempting
to hold it, for as he spoke she withdrew it.

"I was unjust to you the other night. It is so hard to be just
when one is so wretched. We have been like two children who have
quarrelled over their plaything, and broken it in pieces while it was
yet new. We cannot put the wheels again together, or made the broken
reed produce sweet sounds."

"No," he said. "No, no, no. No sounds are any longer sweet. There is
no music now."

"But as we have both sinned, Mr. Bertram, so should we both forgive."

"But I--I have nothing to forgive."

"Alas, yes! and mine was the first fault. I knew that you really
loved me, and--"

"Loved you! Oh, Caroline!"

"Hush, Mr. Bertram; not so; do not speak so. I know that you would
not wrong me; I know you would not lead me into trouble--not into
further trouble; into worse misery."

"And I, that might have led you--no; that might have been led to such
happiness! Lady Harcourt, when I think of what I have thrown away--"

"Think of it not at all, Mr. Bertram."

"And you; can you command your thoughts?"

"Sometimes; and by practice I hope always; at any rate, I make an
effort. And now, good-bye. It will be sweet to me to hear that you
have forgiven me. You were very angry, you know, when you parted from
me last at Littlebath."

"If there be anything for me to forgive, I do forgive it with all my
heart; with all my heart."

"And now, God bless you, Mr. Bertram. The thing that would most tend
to make me contented would be to see you married to some one you
could love; a weight would then be off my soul which now weighs on
it very heavily." And so saying, she rose from her seat and left him
standing over the engravings. He had thrown his pearl away; a pearl
richer than all his tribe. There was nothing for him now but to bear
the loss.

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