while in reality he could have had little genuine wish for my society, or he would not now betray such eagerness in the game he was playing.  The vague sense of wrong I suffered gave me a wish for reprisal of some sort, and the only one convenient at the moment was to prevent the offender from having a clear course.  I found a certain mean pleasure in stirring the Boy to jealousy by reviving, when I could, some half-dead ember of Gaeta’s former interest in me, and his face showed sometimes that my assiduity displeased him.

This was encouragement to persevere, and I praised the Contessa to him when we happened to be alone together.  “You have a short memory it seems,” said he.  “You told me not so long ago that you’d been in love with a girl who jilted you.  Have you forgotten her already?”

I winced under this thrust, but hoped that the Boy did not see it.  His stab reminded me that I had found very little time lately to regret Miss Blantock, now Lady Jerveyson; and Molly Winston’s words recurred to me:  “If I could only prove to you that you aren’t and never have been in love with Helen.”  I had retorted that to accomplish this would be difficult, and she had confidently replied that she would engage to do it, if I would “take her prescription.”  I had taken her prescription, and—­indisputably the wound had become callous, though I was not prepared to admit that it had healed.  However, if I had ceased actively to mourn the grocer’s triumph, it was not Gaeta who had wrought the magic change.  What had caused it I was myself at a loss to understand, but I did not wish to argue the matter with the Boy.  He was welcome to think what he chose.

“Hearts are caught in the rebound sometimes, if for once a proverb can be right,” said I evasively; though a few weeks ago, when Molly had been constantly alluding to her friend Mercedes, I had told myself that no one could achieve such a feat with mine.

To this suggestion the Boy made no response, save to tighten his lips, resolving, I supposed, that if hearts were flying about like shuttlecocks, his battledore should be ready to catch the Contessa’s.

Our road from Chamounix to Annecy led us past gorges and over high precipices and among noble mountains, but my mind was no longer in a condition to receive or retain strong impressions of natural beauty.  I was irritable and “out of myself,” vainly wishing back the days when the Boy and I, undisturbed by feminine society, had travelled tranquilly, side by side, giving each other thought for thought.

    “Nothing can be as it has been;
     Better, so call it, only not the same,”

Browning said; and so, I feared, it would be after this with me.