She was so accustomed to think of him as selfish, loving nothing but himself, that she never imagined that he had grown to love her with a madness of passion to which he would have sacrificed everything on earth. She had been so entirely wrapped up in her own pursuits, in the acquisition of numberless dresses and jewels, that she had not observed the signs of his increasing devotion. Blind to his mad passion for her, she decided upon leaving him; and of all the mistakes that she ever made in her life, none was so great as this. Ten minutes later they were walking rapidly toward the little town of Seipia: there they could go by train to Genoa. As they walked along the high-road Doris laughed and talked gayly, as though nothing had happened since they were first betrothed. "This reminds me of old times, Earle," she said. "How goes the poetry, dear? I expect to hear that you have performed miracles by this time." "You destroyed my poetry, Doris, when you marred my genius and blighted my life!" She laid her hand caressingly on his. "Did I? Then I must make amends for it now," she said. And he was almost vexed to find how the words thrilled him with a keen, passionate delight. Suddenly she raised a laughing face to his. "Was there a very dreadful sensation, Earle, when they found out I was gone?" The smiling face, the laughing voice, smote him like a sharp sword. He remembered the pain and the anguish, the torture he had suffered, the long hours when he had lain between life and death; he remembered the fame he had lost, the sweet gift of genius, all destroyed; his heart broken, his life rendered stale and profitless, while she could smile and ask with laughing eyes if there had been much sensation. "I believe," he cried, with a sudden flame of passion, "women are nerved with heartlessness!" She was scared by his manner. Deep feeling and earnestness were quite out of her line; her bright, shallow nature did not understand it, but she saw that for the future it would be better to say nothing to him about such matters as her running away from home. CHAPTER XLIV. THE NOBLEMAN'S OATH. It was a strange journey home, and during its course Earle often wondered why, at intervals, Doris laughed, as though she found the keenest enjoyment in her own thoughts. He little imagined that she was reveling in the disappointment Lord Vivianne would feel; and she had enough of the woman in her to rejoice in his pain, and to feel pleased that she could deal him some little blow in return for the blow he had dealt her. In her heart she had never forgiven him that he had not found her beauty and her grace inducement sufficient to make him marry her. She could not pardon him that, and she liked to think that he would be annoyed and vexed by her absence.