During this last speech of Cecilia's, Sir Francis had sat down, while she still stood in her old place. He had seated himself on the sofa, assuming as it were a look of profound ease, and arranging the nails of one hand with the fingers of the other, as though he were completely indifferent to the words spoken to him. "Have you done yet?" he said as soon as she was silent. "Yes, I have done." "And you are sure that if I begin you will not interrupt me till I have done?" "I think not,--if there be ought that you have to say." "Well, considering that ten minutes since I was engaged to make you Lady Geraldine, and that I am now supposed to be absolved from any such necessity, I presume you will think it expedient that I should say something. I suppose that I have not been told the whole truth." Then he stopped, as though in spite of his injunction as to her silence he expected an answer from her. But she made none, though there came a cloud of anger upon her face. "I suppose, I say, that there is something of which it is not considered necessary that I should be informed. There must be something of the kind, or you would hardly abandon prospects which a few days since appeared to you to be so desirable." "I have not thought it necessary to speak of your temper," she said. "Nor of your own." "Nor of my own," she added. "But there is, I take it, something beyond that. I do not think that my temper, bad as it may be,--nor your own,--would have sufficed to estrange you. There must be something more palpable than temper to have occasioned it. And though you have not thought fit to tell me, you must feel that my position justifies me in asking. Have you another lover?" "No," she exclaimed, burning with wrath but with head so turned from him that he should not see her. "Nor have ever had one? I am entitled to ask the question, though perhaps I should have asked it before." "You are at any rate not entitled to ask it now. Sir Francis Geraldine, between you and me all is over. I can only beg you to understand most positively that all is over." "My dear Miss Holt, you need not insist upon that, as it is perfectly understood." "Then there need be no further words. If I have done you any wrong I ask your pardon. You have wronged me only in your thoughts. I must take what consolation I can from the feeling that the injury will fall chiefly upon my head and not upon yours." Then without a further word of farewell she marched out of the room.