Oh!" said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, "I was miserable
when I thought you would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you
happy, Robert? Do you like to come home?"

"I think I do--to-night, at least."

"Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, and your
business, and the war?"

"Not just now."

"Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's Cottage too small for you, and
narrow, and dismal?"

"At this moment, no."

"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great
people forget you?"

"No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry
favour with rich and great people. I only want means--a position--a
career."

"Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be
great; you _shall_ be great."

"I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what recipe you
would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it--better
than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? Would it work?
Yes--poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it,
Lina!"

"But you are what I think you."

"I am not."

"You are better, then?"

"Far worse."

"No; far better. I know you are good."

"How do you know it?"

"You look so, and I feel you _are_ so."

"Where do you feel it?"

"In my heart."

"Ah! You judge me with your heart, Lina: you should judge me with your
head."

"I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my
thoughts about you."

Mr. Moore's dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were
compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.

"Think meanly of me, Lina," said he. "Men, in general, are a sort of
scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea. I make no
pretension to be better than my fellows."

"If you did, I should not esteem you so much. It is because you are
modest that I have such confidence in your merit."

"Are you flattering me?" he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and
searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.

"No," she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to
think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.

"You don't care whether I think you flatter me or not?"

"No."

"You are so secure of your own intentions?"

"I suppose so."

"What are they, Caroline?"

"Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and
then to m