fast.  “But we shall never get any thanks,” he said.  “When the thing has been done, and thanks are over due, people will look upon all our work so much as a matter of course that it will never occur to them to think that they owe us anything.  They will have forgotten all their cautions, and will take what they get as though it were simply their due.  Nothing astonishes me so much as the fear people feel before a thing is done when I join it with their want of surprise or admiration afterward.”  In this way even Theodore Burton had resumed his terms of intimacy with Harry Clavering.

Harry had told both Cecilia and Florence of his intended visit to Bolton Street, and they had all become very confidential on the subject.  In most such cases, we may suppose that a man does not say much to one woman of the love which another woman has acknowledged for himself.  Nor was Harry Clavering at all disposed to make any such boast.  But in this case, Lady Ongar herself had told everything to Mrs. Burton.  She had declared her passion, and had declared also her intention of making Harry her husband if he would take her.  Everything was known, and there was no possibility of sparing Lady Ongar’s name.

“If I had been her, I would not have asked for such a meeting,” Cecilia said.  The three were at this time sitting together, for Mr. Burton rarely joined them in their conversation.

“I don’t know,” said Florence.  “I do not see why she and Harry should not remain as friends.”

“They might be friends without meeting now,” said Cecilia.

“Hardly.  If the awkwardness were not got over at once, it would never be got over.  I almost think she is right, though if I was her I should long to have it over.”  That was Florence’s judgment in the matter.  Harry sat between them, like a sheep as he was, very meekly—­not without some enjoyment of his sheepdom, but still feeling that he was a sheep.  At half-past eight he started up, having already been told that a cab was waiting for him at the door.  He pressed Cecilia’s hand as he went, indicating his feeling that he had before him an affair of some magnitude, and then, of course, had a word or two to say to Florence in private on the landing.  Oh, those delicious private words, the need for which comes so often during those short halcyon days of one’s lifetime!  They were so pleasant that Harry would fain have returned to repeat them after he was seated in his cab; but the inevitable wheels carried him onward with cruel velocity, and he was in Bolton Street before the minutes had sufficed for him to collect his thoughts.