The apples at her rich country-seat had quickly become ashes between her teeth, but something of the juice of the fruit might yet reach her palate if he would come and sit with her at the table.  As she complained to herself of the coldness of the world, she thought that she would not care how cold might be all the world if there might be but one whom she could love, and who would love her.  And him she had loved.  To him, in old days—­in days which now seemed to her to be very old—­she had made confession of her love.  Old as were those days, it could not be but he should still remember them.  She had loved him, and him only.  To none other had she ever pretended love.  From none other had love been offered to her.  Between her and that wretched being to whom she had sold herself, who had been half dead before she had seen him, there had been no pretence of love.  But Harry Clavering she had loved.  Harry Clavering was a man, with all those qualities which she valued, and also with those foibles which saved him from being too perfect for so slight a creature as herself.  Harry had been offended to the quick, and had called her a jilt; but yet it might be possible that he would return to her.

It should not be supposed that since her return to England she had had one settled, definite object before her eyes with regard to this renewal of her love.  There had been times in which she had thought that she would go on with the life which she had prepared for herself, and that she would make herself contented, if not happy, with the price which had been paid to her.  And there were other times, in which her spirits sank low within her, and she told herself that no contentment was longer possible to her.  She looked at herself in the glass, and found herself to be old and haggard.  Harry, she said, was the last man in the world to sell himself for wealth, when there was no love remaining.  Harry would never do as she had done with herself!  Not for all the wealth that woman ever inherited—­so she told herself—­would he link himself to one who had made herself vile and tainted among women!  In this, I think, she did him no more than justice, though it maybe that in some other matters she rated his character too highly.  Of Florence Burton she had as yet heard nothing, though had she heard of her, it may well be that she would not on that account have desisted.  Such being her thoughts and her hopes, she had written to Harry, begging him to see this man who had followed her—­she knew not why—­from Italy; and had told the sister simply that she could not do as she was asked, because she was away from London, alone in a country house.