“Why, you surely did not think that I was in earnest, did you?  I was only a little cross.”

“Well, really, Mildred, you’ve got so strange lately that I never know when you are in earnest and when you are not, though, for my part, I am very glad to stay in peace and quiet.”

“Strange, grown strange, have I!” said Mrs. Carr, looking dreamily out of a window that commanded the carriage-drive, with her hands crossed behind her.  “Yes, I think that you are right.  I think that I have lost the old Mildred somewhere or other, and picked up a new one whom I don’t understand.”

“Ah, indeed,” remarked Miss Terry, in the most matter-of-fact way, without having the faintest idea of what her friend was driving at.

“How it rains!  I suppose that he won’t come to-day.”

“He!  Who’s he?”

“Why, how stupid you are!  Mr. Heigham, of course!”

“So you always mean him, when you say ‘he!’”

“Yes, of course I do, if it isn’t ungrammatical.  It is miserable this afternoon.  I feel wretched.  Why, actually, here he comes!” and she tore off like a school-girl into the hall, to meet him.

“Ah, indeed,” again remarked Miss Terry, solemnly, to the empty walls.  “I am not such a fool as I look.  I suppose that Mr. Heigham wouldn’t come to the Isle of Wight.”

It is perhaps needless to say that Mrs. Carr had never been more in earnest in her life than when she announced her intention of departing to the Isle of Wight.  The discovery that her suspicions about Arthur had but too sure a foundation had been a crushing blow to her hopes, and she had formed a wise resolution to see no more of him.  Happy would it have been for her, if she could have found the moral courage to act up to it, and go away, a wiser, if a sadder, woman.  But this was not to be.  The more she contemplated it, the more did her passion —­which was now both wild and deep—­take hold upon her heart, eating into it like acid into steel, and graving one name there in ineffaceable letters.  She could not bear the thought of parting from him, and felt, or thought she felt, that her happiness was already too deeply pledged to allow her to throw up the cards without an effort.

Fortune favours the brave.  Perhaps, after all, it would declare itself for her.  She was modest in her aspirations.  She did not expect that he would ever give her the love he bore this other woman; she only asked to live in the sunlight of his presence, and would be glad to take him at his own price, or indeed at any price.  Man, she knew, is by nature as unstable as water, and will mostly melt beneath the eyes of more women than one, as readily as ice before a fire when the sun has hid his face.  Yes, she would play the game out:  she would not throw away her life’s happiness without an effort.  After all, matters might have been worse:  he might have been actually married.