e so, in order
that he might then have nothing more upon his mind. He found her
quite alone, and he could see by her eyes that she had been weeping.
As he looked at her, remembering that it was not yet six years since
he had first been allowed to enter that room, he could not but
perceive how very much she was altered in appearance. Then she had
been three-and-twenty, and had not looked to be a day older. Now she
might have been taken to be nearly forty, so much had her troubles
preyed upon her spirit, and eaten into the vitality of her youth. "So
you have come to say good-bye," she said, smiling as she rose to meet
him.

"Yes, Lady Laura;--to say good-bye. Not for ever, I hope, but
probably for long."

"No, not for ever. At any rate, we will not think so." Then she
paused; but he was silent, sitting with his hat dangling in his two
hands, and his eyes fixed upon the floor. "Do you know, Mr. Finn,"
she continued, "that sometimes I am very angry with myself about
you."

"Then it must be because you have been too kind to me."

"It is because I fear that I have done much to injure you. From
the first day that I knew you,--do you remember, when we were
talking here, in this very room, about the beginning of the Reform
Bill;--from that day I wished that you should come among us and be
one of us."

"I have been with you, to my infinite satisfaction,--while it
lasted."

"But it has not lasted, and now I fear that it has done you harm."

"Who can say whether it has been for good or evil? But of this I am
sure you will be certain,--that I am very grateful to you for all the
goodness you have shown me." Then again he was silent.

She did not know what it was that she wanted, but she did desire some
expression from his lips that should be warmer than an expression of
gratitude. An expression of love,--of existing love,--she would have
felt to be an insult, and would have treated it as such. Indeed, she
knew that from him no such insult could come. But she was in that
morbid, melancholy state of mind which requires the excitement
of more than ordinary sympathy, even though that sympathy be all
painful; and I think that she would have been pleased had he referred
to the passion for herself which he had once expressed. If he would
have spoken of his love, and of her mistake, and have made some
half-suggestion as to what might have been their lives had things
gone differently,--though she would have rebuked him even for
t