“I know what I am doing, mamma.  I can understand that you thought I was going to marry him.  I thought so myself, but something has happened that has opened my eyes, and I have every reason to be thankful that it has.  I dare say you think that I have behaved very badly, and I am sorry; but I am sure that I am doing right now.”

“What have you discovered, Bertha?  I don’t understand you at all.”

“I don’t suppose you do, mamma.  I cannot tell you what it is.  I told him that I would not tell anybody.”

“But you don’t seem to mind, Bertha; that is what puzzles me.  A girl who has made up her mind to accept a man, and who finds out something that seems to her so bad that she rejects him, would naturally be distressed and upset.  You seem to treat it as if it were a matter of no importance.”

“I don’t quite understand it myself, mamma.  I suppose that my eyes have been opened altogether.  At any rate, I feel that I have had a very narrow escape.  I was certainly very much worried when I first learned about this, two days ago, and I was even distressed; but I think that I have got over the worry, and I am sure that I have quite got over the distress.”

“Then you cannot have cared for him,” Lady Greendale said, emphatically.

“That is just the conclusion that I have arrived at myself, mamma,” Bertha said, calmly.  “I certainly thought that I did, and now I feel sure that I was mistaken altogether.”

Lady Greendale could say nothing further.

“I had better send off a note to Frank, my dear,” she said, plaintively.  “Of course you are not thinking of going out sailing after this.”

“Indeed, I am, mamma.  Why shouldn’t we?  Of course I am not going to say anything here of what has happened.  If he chooses to talk about it he can, but I don’t suppose that he will.  It is just the end of the season, and we need not go back to town at all, and next spring everyone will have forgotten all about it.  You know what people will say:  ’I thought that Greendale girl was going to marry Carthew.  I suppose nothing has come of it.  Did she refuse him I wonder, or did he change his mind?’ And there will be an end of it.  The end of the season wipes a sponge over everything.  People start afresh, and, as somebody says—­Tennyson, isn’t it? or Longfellow?—­they ‘let the dead past bury its dead.’”

Lady Greendale lifted her hands in mild despair, put on her things, and went down to the boat with Bertha.

“I have brought a book, mamma,” the latter said as they went down.  “I shall tell Frank about this, though I shall tell no one else.  I always knew that he did not like Mr. Carthew.  So you can amuse yourself reading while we are talking.”

“You are a curious girl, Bertha,” her mother said, resignedly.  “I used to think that I understood you; now I feel that I don’t understand you at all.”

“I don’t know that I understand myself, mamma, but I know enough of myself to see that I am not so wise as I thought I was, and somebody says that ’When you first discover you are a fool it is the first step towards being wise,’ or something of the sort.