‘I know you did not--that’s why the avowal is so sweet to me. Can I take you at your word?’ ‘Yes, I suppose.’ ‘Then your preference is the greatest honour that has ever fallen to my lot. It is enough: you accept me?’ ‘As a lover on probation--no more.’ The conversation being carried on in low tones, Paula’s uncle and aunt took it as a hint that their presence could be spared, and severally left the room--the former gladly, the latter with some vexation. Charlotte De Stancy followed. ‘And to what am I indebted for this happy change?’ inquired De Stancy, as soon as they were alone. ‘You shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,’ she replied brusquely, and with tears in her eyes for one gone. ‘You mistake my motive. I am like a reprieved criminal, and can scarcely believe the news.’ ‘You shouldn’t say that to me, or I shall begin to think I have been too kind,’ she answered, some of the archness of her manner returning. ‘Now, I know what you mean to say in answer; but I don’t want to hear more at present; and whatever you do, don’t fall into the mistake of supposing I have accepted you in any other sense than the way I say. If you don’t like such a limitation you can go away. I dare say I shall get over it.’ ‘Go away! Could I go away?--But you are beginning to tease, and will soon punish me severely; so I will make my escape while all is well. It would be presumptuous to expect more in one day.’ ‘It would indeed,’ said Paula, with her eyes on a bunch of flowers. VI. On leaving the hotel, Somerset’s first impulse was to get out of sight of its windows, and his glance upward had perhaps not the tender significance that Paula imagined, the last look impelled by any such whiff of emotion having been the lingering one he bestowed upon her in passing out of the room. Unluckily for the prospects of this attachment, Paula’s conduct towards him now, as a result of misrepresentation, had enough in common with her previous silence at Nice to make it not unreasonable as a further development of that silence. Moreover, her social position as a woman of wealth, always felt by Somerset as a perceptible bar to that full and free eagerness with which he would fain have approached her, rendered it impossible for him to return to the charge, ascertain the reason of her coldness, and dispel it by an explanation, without being suspected of mercenary objects. Continually does it happen that a genial willingness to bottle up affronts is set down to interested motives by those who do not know what generous conduct means. Had she occupied the financial position of Miss De Stancy he would readily have persisted further and, not improbably, have cleared up the cloud.