"Certainly, if you wish it. But, Mr. Arling, the subject was closed, for me, with her question and your answer. Would it not be as well for you to let it rest there, also?" Bergan only shook his head. And after a moment's study of his grave face, Mrs. Lyte, very quietly, as if it were a matter in which she had no concern, mentioned the report that had been brought her. As quietly, Bergan told her the whole story of his stay at the Hall:--doing so the more readily, it needs not to be said to those anywise skilled in the intricacies of the human mind, because he felt that it was not required of him. For, though Mrs. Lyte listened with the kindest interest and sympathy, she took care to show by her manner that she did so more to satisfy him than herself. In matters like this, she was accustomed to trust her instincts more implicitly than her reason; and she was wise enough to know that trust is the short road to truth, in all characters not radically bad. And thus, with the singular inconsequence of human life, the explanation was made where it was not needed, and left unspoken where it would have availed much against future misunderstanding, trouble, wrong, and sorrow! IV. PATIENT WAITING. Five or six weeks now glided slowly by, without working any change in either the circumstances or the relations of the characters with whom this history has to do. Bergan still shivered in the chill remoteness of position into which he had been flung, partly by his fault and partly by his misfortune. Not only between him and his relatives, but dividing him from the whole reputable outside world, there seemed to be a gulf fixed, impassable save to formal courtesies and commonplace usages. Anything warmer, more personal, more exacting, sought in vain for an eligible crossing place; and, if it leaped the gray chasm, it was only to lose itself among chill, elusive shapes of mist, on the opposite side. Thus excluded from the only society for which he cared, Bergan did not, as a weaker character might have done, betake himself for consolation to the lower circles of vice and dissipation that would have welcomed him rapturously. He could better afford to stand alone, he thought, than to throw himself into arms whose embrace would soil, and whose seeming support was an insidious undermining. Besides, it was much more in accordance with his character to regard the exclusion from which he suffered as a challenge to be answered, an adversary to be overcome, rather than a verdict to be acquiesced in. He would prove to the world that it had been mistaken.