Miss Hardacre’s hands were fidgeting in her lap. She had prepared a gay and airy part, but all her brave impudence and coquetry seemed to have deserted her. She was too conscious of her ugliness; the inspiration of vanity was dead within her. The pretty puppet could no longer ply her fan, flash her gray eyes, simper, and show her teeth. She seemed to realize of a sudden that courteous pity alone could make a man look kindly at her face. Jeffray’s first stare had told her that. “I have been very ill, Richard,” she said, almost humbly, looking at him a moment as for sympathy, and then lowering her eyes. Jeffray was sitting very stiffly on the settle, looking like a man who had been offered a cup of poison or the renunciation of his faith. “I know; I am sorry; it was all my fault,” he answered her. There was a lack of tone and of vitality about the reply that made Jilian shrink. “I am not what I was, Richard,” she said, pressing her handkerchief against her lips and leaving a vermilion stain on the cambric; “no doubt you find me greatly changed.” Her eyes challenged him with the shallow despair of a vain woman. Jeffray reddened, and could not meet her look as he stammered out feeble contradictions. “You are not recovered yet, Jilian, and Lot hinted that I might find you a little changed. I am sorry; believe me, I am. Why, you don’t look so pale as I expected, nor yet so thin. We shall soon have you well and handsome again, and all the women round about will be for envying you.” It was a poor and jerky apology enough, and Miss Hardacre was not for one moment deceived by it. The boy was shocked, disgusted, even as she had feared he would be, and no doubt he was wondering how he could marry such a painted hag. Jilian imagined that she understood the whole of Jeffray’s heart, and that he shrank from her just as the rest of the world might shrink. From humiliation her mood turned suddenly towards impatience, and from impatience to reproachful bitterness. “It is very hard, Richard,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed upon her satin slippers. “Hard, Jilian?” She flashed up petulantly, her eyes beginning to glitter. “To be sure, I am ugly now, an old fright; I shall never be pretty again. Don’t deny it, Richard; I saw it all in your eyes from the first moment. Yes, I am ugly, and very miserable, and it is hard and bitter and cruel. I am beginning to hate myself just as everybody else will hate me.” Jeffray hung his head, looked as ashamed and contrite as though every word accused him of dishonor. Yet for the life of him he could not forget Bess Grimshaw’s face, the scent of her clothes, the glimmer of her hair. The generous hypocrisies died unuttered on his tongue. His sincerity grappled him; he was sorry for Jilian, but he could not do his pity justice. “It is all my fault,” he said, dejectedly.