"What a question, darling!"
"Yes, I know it is silly."
"Bessie," he exclaimed, after a moment's thought; "I cannot help the feeling—you seem changed."
"I—changed, Grantley?"
"It may be my fault; but I feel as if there was a something which kept us apart—a mystery which I cannot penetrate—a gulf which no effort of mine can bridge."
She was a little agitated at first, but that passed.
"What mystery could there be?" she asked. "I don't understand you, Grantley."
"I hardly know what I mean myself. Is it my fault, Elizabeth? Are you angry still at what I said the night you lost your bracelet?"
She did not stir; she kept the hand he held even from quivering, but the face he could not see grew white and contracted under a sterner pain.
"Were you angry, Bessie?" he repeated.