“You are determined to rebuke me, I see,” said he.  “If you choose to do so, I am prepared to bear it.  My defence, if I have a defence, is one that I can not use.”

“And what would be your defence?”

“I have said that I can not use it!”

“As if I did not understand it all!  What you mean to say is this—­that when your good stars sent you in the way of Florence Burton, you had been ill treated by her who would have made your pandemonium for you, and that she therefore—­she who came first, and behaved so badly, can have no right to find fault with you in that you have obeyed your good stars and done so well for yourself.  That is what you call your defence.  It would be perfect, Harry, perfect, if you had only whispered to me a word of Miss Burton when I first saw you after my return home.  It is odd to me that you should not have written to me and told me when I was abroad with my husband.  It would have comforted me to have known that the wound which I had given had been cured—­that is, if there was a wound.”

“You know that there was a wound.”

“At any rate, it was not mortal.  But when are such wounds mortal?  When are they more than skin-deep?”

“I can say nothing as to that now.”

“No, Harry, of course you can say nothing.  Why should you be made to say anything?  You are fortunate and happy, and have all that you want.  I have nothing that I want.”

There was a reality in the tone of sorrow in which this was spoken which melted him at once, and the more so in that there was so much in her grief which could not but be flattering to his vanity.  “Do not say that, Lady Ongar,” he exclaimed.

“But I do say it.  What have I got in the world that is worth having?  My possessions are ever so many thousands a year—­and a damaged name.”

“I deny that.  I deny it altogether.  I do not think that there is one who knows of your story who believes ill of you.”

“I could tell you of one, Harry, who thinks very ill of me—­nay, of two; and they are both in this room.  Do you remember how you used to teach me that terribly conceited bit of Latin—­Nil conscire sibi?  Do you suppose that I can boast that I never grow pale as I think of my own fault?  I am thinking of it always, and my heart is ever becoming paler and paler.  And as to the treatment of others—­I wish I could make you know what I suffered when I was fool enough to go to that place in Surrey.  The coachman who drives me no doubt thinks that I poisoned my husband, and the servant who let you in just now supposes me to be an abandoned woman because you are here.”

“You will be angry with me, perhaps, if I say that these feelings are morbid and will die away.  They show the weakness which has come from the ill usage you have suffered.”

“You are right in part, no doubt.  I shall become hardened to it all, and shall fall into some endurable mode of life in time.  But I can look forward to nothing.  What future have I?  Was there ever any one so utterly friendless as I am?  Your kind cousin has done that for me; and yet he came here to me the other day, smiling and talking as though he were sure that I should be delighted by his condescension.  I do not think that he will ever come again.”