Hector became more and more unhappy.  He tried several subjects.  He told her the last news of her father and Mrs. McBride.  She answered them all with the same politeness, until, maddened beyond bearing, he leaned still farther forward and whispered in her ear: 

“For God’s sake, what is it?  What have I done?”

“Nothing,” said Theodora.  What right had she to ask him any question, when for these seven nights and days since they had parted she had been disciplining herself not to think of him in any way?  She must never let him know it could matter to her now.

“Nothing?  Then why are you so changed?  Ah, how it hurts!” he whispered, passionately.  And she turned and looked at him, and he saw that her beautiful eyes were no longer those pure depths of blue sky in which he could read love and faith, but were full of mist, as of a curtain between them.

He put his hand up to touch the little gold case he carried always now in his waistcoat-pocket, which contained her letter.  He wanted to assure himself it was there, and she had written it—­and it was not all a dream.

Theodora’s tender heart was wrung by the passionate distress in his eyes.

“Is that your mother over there you were with?” she asked, more gently.  “How beautiful she is!”

“Yes,” he said, “my mother and Morella Winmarleigh, whom the world in general and my mother in particular have decided I am going to marry.”

She did not speak.  She felt suddenly ashamed she could ever have doubted him; it must be the warping atmosphere of Mrs. Devlyn’s society for these last days which had planted thoughts, so foreign to her nature, in her.  She did not yet know it was jealousy pure and simple, which attacks the sweetest, as well, as the bitterest, soul among us all.  But a thrill of gladness ran through her as well as shame.

“And aren’t you going to marry her, then?” she said, at last.  “She is very handsome.”

Hector looked at her, and a wave of joy chased out the pain he had suffered.  That was it, then!  They had told her this already, and she hated it—­she cared for him still.

“Surely you need not ask me,” he said, deep reproach in his eyes.  “You must be very changed in seven days to even have thought it possible.”

The shame deepened in Theodora.  She was, indeed, unlike herself to have been moved at all by Mrs. Devlyn’s words, but she would never doubt again, and she must tell him that.

“Forgive me,” she said, quite low, while she looked away.  “I—­of course I ought to be pleased at anything which made you happy, but—­oh, I hated it!”

“Theodora,” he said, “I ask you—­do not act with me ever—­to what end?  We know each other’s hearts, and I hope it would pain you were I to marry any other woman, as much as in like circumstances it would pain me.”

“Yes, it would pain me,” she said, simply.  “But, oh, we must not speak thus!  Please, please talk of the music, or the—­the—­oh, anything but ourselves.”