But then, on the other hand, what could be more absurd than for a man to suppose, because a girl was glad enough to amuse herself with him for a week or two, in absolute default of all other society, that she was ready to marry him, and go to India with him! To India! What an idea! And it had been quite as much for his amusement as for hers. Neither of them had any one else: it was in self-defence--it was the only resource against absolute dulness. It had made the time pass for him as well as for her. He ought to have known all along that she meant nothing more. Indeed Constance wondered how he could be so silly as to want to have a wife and double his expenses, and bind himself for life. A man, she reflected, must be so much better off when he has only himself to think of. Fancy him taking _her_ bills on his shoulders as well as his own! She wondered, with a contemptuous laugh, how he would like that, or if he had the least idea what these bills would be. On the whole, it was evident, in every point of view, that he was much better out of it. Perhaps even by this time he would have been tearing his hair, had she taken him at his word. But no. Constance could not persuade herself that this was likely. Yet he would have torn his hair, she was certain, before the end of the first year. Thus she worked herself round to something like self-forgiveness; but all the same there rankled at her heart a sense of meanness, the consciousness of having gone out in battle-array and vanquished with beat of drum and sound of trumpet an unprepared and undefended adversary, an antagonist with whom the struggle was not fair. Her sense of honour was touched, and all her arguments could not content her with herself. “I suppose you have been out with the Gaunts again?” Waring said, as they sat at table, in a dissatisfied tone. “Yes; but you need never put the question to me again in that uncomfortable way, for George Gaunt is going off to-morrow, papa.” “Oh, he is going off to-morrow? Then I suppose you have been honest, and given him his _congé_ at last?” “I honest? I did not know I had ever been accused of picking and stealing. If he had asked me for his _congé_, he should have had it long ago. He has been sent for, it seems.” “Then has the _congé_ not yet been asked for? In that case we shall have him back again, I suppose?” said her father, in a tone of resignation, and with a shrug of his shoulders. “No; for his people will be away. They are going to Switzerland, and the Durants are going to Homburg. Where do you mean to go, when it is too hot to stay here?” He looked at her half angrily for a moment. “It is never too hot to stay here,” he said; then, after a pause, “We can move higher up among the hills.” “Where one will never see a soul--worse even than here!” “Oh, you will see plenty of country-folk,” he said--“a fine race of people, mountaineers, yet husbandmen, which is a rare combination.”