"Lady Harcourt!"
"I will sit down, if you please, now. I do not know why I speak thus." And then, without further words, she caused herself to be led away, and sitting down between two old dowagers, debarred him absolutely from the power of another word.
Immediately after this he left the house; but she remained for another hour—remained and danced with young Lord Echo, who was a Whig lordling; and with Mr. Twisleton, whose father was a Treasury secretary. They both talked to her about Harcourt, and the great speech he was making at that moment; and she smiled and looked so beautiful, that when they got together at one end of the supper-table, they declared that Harcourt was out-and-out the luckiest dog of his day; and questioned his right to monopolize such a treasure.
And had he been cruel? had he been unforgiving? had he denied to her that pardon which it behoved him so often to ask for himself? This was the question which Bertram was now forced to put to himself. And that other question, which he could now answer but in one way. Had he then been the cause of his own shipwreck? Had he driven his own bark on the rocks while the open channel was there clear before him? Had she not now assured him of her love, though no word of tenderness had passed her lips? And whose doing had it been? Yes, certainly; it had been his own doing.
The conviction which thus came upon him did not add much to his comfort. There was but little consolation to him now in the assurance that she had loved, and did love him. He had hitherto felt himself to be an injured man; but now he had to feel that he himself had committed the injury. "Whose doing has it been? You—you in your pride, could forgive nothing!" These words rang in his ears; his memory repeated to him hourly the tone in which they had been spoken. She had accused him of destroying all her hopes for this world—and he had answered not a word to the accusation.
On the morning after that ball at Mrs. Madden's, Sir Henry came into his wife's room while she was still dressing. "By-the-by," said he, "I saw you at Mrs. Madden's last night."
"Yes; I perceived that you were there for a moment," Caroline answered.
"You were dancing. I don't know that I ever saw you dancing before."
"I have not done so since I was married. In former days I used to be fond of it."
"Ah, yes; when you were at Littlebath. It did not much matter then what you did in that way; but—"