Psha!"

"It suits you, Lady Laura, to be harsh to me, but you are not
speaking your thoughts."

Then she lost all control of herself, and poured out to him the real
truth that was in her. "And whose thoughts did you speak when you and
I were on the braes of Loughlinter? Am I wrong in saying that change
is easy to you, or have I grown to be so old that you can talk to me
as though those far-away follies ought to be forgotten? Was it so
long ago? Talk of love! I tell you, sir, that your heart is one in
which love can have no durable hold. Violet Effingham! There may be
a dozen Violets after her, and you will be none the worse." Then she
walked away from him to the window, and he stood still, dumb, on the
spot that he had occupied. "You had better go now," she said, "and
forget what has passed between us. I know that you are a gentleman,
and that you will forget it." The strong idea of his mind when he
heard all this was the injustice of her attack,--of the attack as
coming from her, who had all but openly acknowledged that she had
married a man whom she had not loved because it suited her to escape
from a man whom she did love. She was reproaching him now for his
fickleness in having ventured to set his heart upon another woman,
when she herself had been so much worse than fickle,--so profoundly
false! And yet he could not defend himself by accusing her. What
would she have had of him? What would she have proposed to him, had
he questioned her as to his future, when they were together on the
braes of Loughlinter? Would she not have bid him to find some one
else whom he could love? Would she then have suggested to him the
propriety of nursing his love for herself,--for her who was about
to become another man's wife,--for her after she should have become
another man's wife? And yet because he had not done so, and because
she had made herself wretched by marrying a man whom she did not
love, she reproached him!

He could not tell her of all this, so he fell back for his defence on
words which had passed between them since the day when they had met
on the braes. "Lady Laura," he said, "it is only a month or two since
you spoke to me as though you wished that Violet Effingham might be
my wife."

"I never wished it. I never said that I wished it. There are moments
in which we try to give a child any brick on the chimney top for
which it may whimper." Then there was another silence which she was
the first to break. "You ha