"Then," said Harcourt, "you are an ass;" and as he spoke he finished the flask.
Bertram kept his word, and told his lady-love all particulars as to the game he killed; some particulars also he gave her as to scenery, as to his friends, and as to Scotch people. He wrote nice, chatty, amusing letters, such as most people love to get from their friends; but he said little or nothing about love. Once or twice he ventured to tell her of some pretty girl that he met, of some adventure with a laird's daughter; nay, insinuated laughingly that he had not escaped from it quite heart-whole. Caroline answered his letter in the same tone; told him, with excellent comedy, of the leading facts of life in Littlebath; recommended him by all means to go back after the laird's daughter; described the joy of her heart at unexpectedly meeting Mr. M'Gabbery in the pump-room, and her subsequent disappointment at hearing that there was now a Mrs. M'Gabbery. He had married that Miss Jones, of whom the parental Potts had so strongly disapproved. All this was very nice, very amusing, and very friendly. But Bertram, as a lover, knew that he was not satisfied.
When he had done with the grouse and the laird's daughter he went to Oxford, but he did not then go again to Littlebath. He went to Oxford, and from thence to Arthur Wilkinson's parsonage. Here he saw much of Adela; and consoled himself by talking with her about Caroline. To her he did not conceal his great anger. While he was still writing good-humoured, witty letters to his betrothed, he was saying of her to Adela Gauntlet things harsh—harsher perhaps in that they were true.
"I had devoted myself to her," he said. "I was working for her as a galley-slave works, and was contented to do it. I would have borne anything, risked anything, endured anything, if she would have borne it with me. All that I have should have gone to shield her from discomfort. I love her still, Miss Gauntlet; it is perhaps my misery that I love her. But I can never love her now as I should have done had she come to me then."
"How can I work now?" he said again. "I shall be called to the bar of course; there is no difficulty in that; and may perhaps earn what will make us decently respectable. But the spirit, the high spirit is gone. She is better pleased that it should be so. She is intolerant of enthusiasm. Is it not a pity, Miss Gauntlet, that we should be so different?"
What could Adela say to him? Every word that he uttered was to her a truth—a weary, melancholy truth; a repetition of that truth which was devouring her own heart. She sympathized with him fully, cordially, ardently. She said no word absolutely in dispraise of Caroline; but she admitted, and at last admitted so often, that, according to her thinking, Caroline was wrong.
"Wrong!" Bertram would shout. "Can there be a doubt? Can any one with a heart doubt?" Adela said, "No; no one with a heart could doubt."
"She has no heart," said Bertram. "She is lovely, clever, fascinating, elegant. She has everything a woman should have except a heart—except a heart." And then, as he turned away his face, Adela could see that he brushed his hand across his eyes.
What could she do but weep too? And is it not known to all men—certainly it is to all women—how dangerous are such tears?
Thus during his stay at Hurst Staple, Bertram was frequently at West Putford. But he observed that Adela was not often at his cousin's vicarage, and that Arthur was very seldom at West Putford. The families, it was clear, were on as good terms as ever. Adela and Mary and Sophia would be together, and old Mr. Gauntlet would dine at Hurst Staple, and Arthur would talk about the old rector freely enough. But Bertram rarely saw Adela unless he went to the rectory, and though he dined there with the Wilkinson girls three or four times, Arthur only dined there once.