Violets after her, and you will be none the worse.”  Then she walked away from him to the window, and he stood still, dumb, on the spot that he had occupied.  “You had better go now,” she said, “and forget what has passed between us.  I know that you are a gentleman, and that you will forget it.”  The strong idea of his mind when he heard all this was the injustice of her attack,—­of the attack as coming from her, who had all but openly acknowledged that she had married a man whom she had not loved because it suited her to escape from a man whom she did love.  She was reproaching him now for his fickleness in having ventured to set his heart upon another woman, when she herself had been so much worse than fickle,—­so profoundly false!  And yet he could not defend himself by accusing her.  What would she have had of him?  What would she have proposed to him, had he questioned her as to his future, when they were together on the braes of Loughlinter?  Would she not have bid him to find some one else whom he could love?  Would she then have suggested to him the propriety of nursing his love for herself,—­for her who was about to become another man’s wife,—­for her after she should have become another man’s wife?  And yet because he had not done so, and because she had made herself wretched by marrying a man whom she did not love, she reproached him!

He could not tell her of all this, so he fell back for his defence on words which had passed between them since the day when they had met on the braes.  “Lady Laura,” he said, “it is only a month or two since you spoke to me as though you wished that Violet Effingham might be my wife.”

“I never wished it.  I never said that I wished it.  There are moments in which we try to give a child any brick on the chimney top for which it may whimper.”  Then there was another silence which she was the first to break.  “You had better go,” she said.  “I know that I have committed myself, and of course I would rather be alone.”

“And what would you wish that I should do?”

“Do?” she said.  “What you do can be nothing to me.”

“Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?”

“I have spoken nothing about myself, sir,—­only as I have been drawn to do so by your pretence of being love-sick.  You can do nothing for me,—­nothing,—­nothing.  What is it possible that you should do for me?  You are not my father, or my brother.”  It is not to be supposed that she wanted him to fall at her feet.  It is to be supposed that had he done so her reproaches would have been hot and heavy on him; but yet it almost seemed to him as though he had no other alternative.  No!—­He was not her father or her brother;—­nor could he be her husband.  And at this very moment, as she knew, his heart was sore with love for another woman.  And yet he hardly knew how not to throw himself at her feet, and swear, that he would return now and for ever to his old passion, hopeless, sinful, degraded as it would be.