"Less happy!" she said; but not with that scorn with which she had before repeated his words.
"You believe, I hope, that I would wish you to be happy; that I would do anything in my power to make you so?"
"There can be nothing now in your power, Mr. Bertram." And as she spoke she involuntarily put an emphasis on the now, which made her words convey much more than she had intended.
"No," he said. "No. What can such a one as I do? What could I ever have done? But say that you forgive me, Lady Harcourt."
"Let us both forgive," she whispered, and as she did so, she put out her hand to him. "Let us both forgive. It is all that we can do for each other."
"Oh, Caroline, Caroline!" he said, speaking hardly above his breath, and with his eyes averted, but still holding her hand; or attempting to hold it, for as he spoke she withdrew it.
"I was unjust to you the other night. It is so hard to be just when one is so wretched. We have been like two children who have quarrelled over their plaything, and broken it in pieces while it was yet new. We cannot put the wheels again together, or made the broken reed produce sweet sounds."
"No," he said. "No, no, no. No sounds are any longer sweet. There is no music now."
"But as we have both sinned, Mr. Bertram, so should we both forgive."
"But I—I have nothing to forgive."