"But suppose—for the sake of argument—that you could not help yourself?"
"I hope I could help it, Beatrice. I should not allow him to remind me of the past."
"Would not the past suggest itself sufficiently? Ah, my dear, he is a very strong man! And you are as weak as—well, we needn't say anything about that. If he wanted your love back, and you had it in your heart——"
"If he did," interposed Rachel; "but I know he never would—I should love him no more."
"Would that be in accordance with the terms of your philosophy?"
"Yes, it would. For nature makes us with many capacities. Some of them counteract the others. Don't talk of these things any more, Beatrice—I don't like it."
"Very well, dear; I won't."
The little lady got up from her seat on the floor, opened a window, put the teacups on the table, and asked her cousin if she had seen the beautiful Persian tiles that Mr. Kingston had just had sent out to him for one of the dados in the new house.
Rachel responded absently, gazed for a little while in silence upon the sleepy garden full of flowers and humming bees, and as Mrs. Reade had expected, returned herself to the abandoned topic.
"At any rate," she said thoughtfully, "there is one thing I would always do. I would tell the truth. I would never have secrets. I would sooner do the wrongest thing, the wickedest crime, than hide it. If I feel things in my heart—well, my husband, if I have one, shall know all that I know. And I will never do anything that he—that the whole world—may not see."