George reddened, and looked disconcerted; then laughed uneasily, and answered:
"I know what you mean. You mean that I know myself very little if I lay the blame of my sins and follies on circumstances, don't you?"
She did not answer him, nor did she remove her serious fixed gaze from his face.
"Yes," he said, "that is what you mean, and you are right. Still, I think the want of money made me reckless, made me worse than I should otherwise have been. I might not have spent it badly, you know, after all. I don't feel any inclination to go wrong now."
"No; you are under your mother's influence," said Harriet. And then George thought how much he should like to tell this woman--for whom he felt so much regard, and such growing compassion, though he could not give any satisfactory reason for the feeling--about Clare Carruthers. He thought he should like to confess to her the fault of which he had been guilty towards the unconscious girl, and to ask her counsel. He thought he should like to acknowledge the existence of another influence, in addition to his mother's. But he restrained the resolution, he hardly knew why. Harriet might think him a presumptuous fool to assign any importance to his chance meeting with the young lady, and, besides, Harriet herself was ill, and ill at ease, and he had talked sufficiently about himself already. No, if he were ever to mention Clare to Harriet, it should not be now.
"Routh is too rich now, too completely a man of capital and business, for me to hope to be of any use to him with my little windfalls," said George, heartily; "but of course he knows, and you too, I shall never forget all I owe him."
Harriet forced herself to smile, and utter some commonplace sentences of deprecation.
"There is one thing I want to do with some of the money I have been paid for my story," said George, "and I want to consult you about it. I have to touch on a painful subject, too, in doing so. You remember all about the bracelet which my dear mother gave me? You remember how we broke it up together that night?"
Harriet remembered. She did not tell him so in words, but she bent her head, and turned it from him, and set her face towards the street.
"You remember," he repeated. "Pray forgive me, if the allusion is agitating. We little thought then what had happened; however, we won't talk about that any more. What I want to do is this: you have the gold setting of the bracelet and the blue stones, sapphires, turquoises: what do you call them? I want to replace the diamonds. I can do so by adding a little of my uncle's gift to my own money, and, when you return to England, I shall get the gold and things from you. I can easily procure the Palais Royal bracelet--Ellen will get it for me--and have the other restored exactly. If my mother is ever well enough to be told about it--and there is every probability that she will be, thank God--I think she will be glad I should have done this."