It was only rarely that she had any personal talk with her husband. The wall of separation between them seemed to be thickening by silent accretion all the time. It was very difficult to scale this wall, and she felt that any effort to do so irked him no less than it did her. So, with an instinct not to let go the present opportunity, she said, rather eagerly, as he was rising to go away: "Sit down a moment. We do not often speak together. I have something on my mind to say to you." He resumed his seat and lighted a cigar--an action which discouraged her by its nonchalance. Still, she was determined to go on. By a great effort she made her voice very gentle, as she said: "I know I have disappointed you in what you had hoped from this marriage between us, and I want to tell you I am very sorry. If I have not been able to give you the feeling which you desired--" He interrupted her. "Feeling?" he said. "Who wants feeling nowadays in a wife? No one expects it. I wanted some one to make a handsome figure as Lady Hurdly. I expected that you would do that, and you have not disappointed me." "If this is true, I'm glad to know it," she said; "but, at any rate, you could not blame me for not giving you the love another woman might have given you. I never deceived you as to that. I told you I had not that love to give; not--as you have so unjustly hinted--because I had given it to another man, but because I was then incapable of love. I had no thought of any one beyond myself. I was miserably ignorant and egoistic. It was in ignorance and egoism that I took the position of your wife, but I think from the first that I have tried, as I could, to fulfil its obligations. I have tried to be and to appear what you would wish. And I am not unmindful of the honor and distinction which my marriage to you has conferred upon me." "Gad! I should hope not! One of the biggest positions in England!" he exclaimed, in a tone of scornful irritation. With these words he rose and left the room. Bettina's pride was deeply wounded. It had been that new assertion of the control of duty which had led her to say these things to her husband. She had conquered much in herself before speaking, and she felt that she had a right to resent the almost brutal insensibility with which he had received her words. As she turned from the breakfast-room and mounted to her own apartments she felt conscious of a new humiliation in her life. Up to this time she had believed that Lord Hurdly would have been incapable of such speech as he had used to her that morning. She had done a good deal--more than was required of her, she told herself--in speaking to him as she had done after his words in the early part of their conversation, and now it seemed plain to her that she had fulfilled her whole duty toward him, and that if it had done no good, the fault was on his side and not on hers.