feelings. She seemed unconscious of his investigation--her mind was pre-occupied. Sometimes, on the other hand, she would betray a certain uneasiness, and change the subject in a way that betrayed her consciousness; but that was only when her mind was quite free. From the time when she began to have a grievance, an anxiety of her own, she escaped from the most cautious wiles of his scrutiny. She was more occupied by thoughts of her son than by thoughts of him. Was this consistent with _love_? Poor James Beresford, feeling that this would decide him in a moment could he know, one way or another, what her feelings were, was thus thrown out and forced to fall back upon his own. And what were his own?--A maze of conflicting ideas, wishes, prejudices, and traditions of old affection. There was nothing in the world he would not have given up cheerfully rather than lose this sweet friend--this consoler and sympathiser in all his troubles. But he did not want her to be his wife. His Annie, it might be, had faded into a distant shadow; but that shadow represented to him a whole world past and over--the world of love and active, brilliant, joyous happiness. His nature, too, had fallen into the shadows--he did not want that kind of happiness now; one passion had been enough for him; he wanted a friend, and that he had--he did not want anything more. And the idea of disturbing all the unity of his life by a second beginning gave him a smart shock. Can a man have more wives than one?--Can he have more lives than one?--He was a fanciful man, of fastidious mind, and with many niceties of feeling such as ruder minds called fantastic. He shrank from the thought of banishing from his house even the shadow and name of her who was gone. To be sure if he could make up his mind that _she_ wished it, all these resolutions would have gone to the winds; and it is very likely that he would have been very happy--happier than he could ever be otherwise. But then he could not make her feelings out. Would she go visibly away from him, even while he was sitting by her, into her troubles about Edward--eyes and heart alike growing blank to him, and full of her boy--if she had given to him a place above her boys in her affections? Surely no. I would not even assert that there was not the slightest possible suspicion of pique in this conclusion, for the man would have been flattered to know that the woman loved him, even though he was conscious that he did not so regard her. But ‘the warmer feeling’ of which all their friends were so sure, of which everybody concluded that it had grown unconsciously _en tout bien et tout honneur_ out of that friendship which the world holds to be impossible between man and woman--was just the one thing about which the principal person concerned could have no certainty at all. He knew what the friendship was--it was almost life to him; it was his strongest support--his best consolation;