Again and again they met, and before very long he spoke of love to her; and Sophy, whose life had been hitherto a joyless one, gave him her heart without concealment, and found that, for the first time, she had discovered happiness. But that happiness soon had its alloy of trouble. When Christmas came, and the Bishop and his wife called, and society in general followed their example, Sophy naturally wondered, and asked Robert why he did not do the same. He was prepared for the question, which he knew must come sooner or later, and his answer had long been determined upon. He at once said that he threw himself entirely on her mercy, and even if it were the signal for his dismissal from her side for ever, he would tell her the truth. He told her that, owing to want of control as a boy, he had been when a very young man, spendthrift and wild, and that he had dissipated his fortune in folly and amusements. That the Christian propriety of Canterbury had taken upon itself to be greatly scandalized thereby; and that although he had long since given up his former courses, and had returned and lived happily and quietly with his old father, although that father himself had never complained to him, or, he believed, to any one, of his previous folly, yet that society in general had taken upon itself to refuse its assent to the welcome of the prodigal, but had indeed desired him to go into a far country and be fed upon husks. Sophy, instead of being shocked at all this, clung to him, as might have been expected, all the closer. The well-affected scorn and bitterness with which he spoke of the Christian charity of society, struck, as he had intended it should, a sympathetic chord in her own breast; for had not she, too, been declared under the ban of society, and for no fault or sin of her own? It is true, society had now condescended to visit her, but why? Was she any better or more honourably born than before? Had her conduct in any way softened them towards her? Not a bit. A bishop had said that she might be visited, and so the world had graciously extended its hand and received her into its fold. But although Sophy accepted the offered hand, she hated the giver of it; and although she arrayed her face with a placid smile as she entered into society, it only covered a sense of bitter outrage and of indignant contempt. Nursing, as she did, feelings like these, it was with an absolute sense of pleasure that she found that her lover, like herself, was deemed an outcast. To her it was but one more new tie between them; and when Robert had finished his confession, her own rage and wrongs against society broke out in a stream of bitter, passionate words, and Robert Gregory found there was far more in the ordinarily tranquil, quiet woman before him than he had ever given her credit for. However, her present frame of mind was most favourable for his plans, and he therefore took good care to keep alive her resentment against the world,