Vaguely he repeated the words over and over again, as he sat listlessly in a chair looking out over the fair landscape, but seeing it not. Faithless! The girl who had kindled the glow of all earthly bliss, the girl who had seemed a very angel of purity and beauty, was false! While he held her clasped in his arms and breathed his earnest, sacred vows of love, she was false! As she smiled in radiant tenderness and whispered back her own, she was false! Through it all she had been false! It was inconceivable; it was maddening! A fortnight wore away, but Stuart’s mood did not alter; he sat silent and morbid, trying to understand it all, to get at the truth. Vane grew a little troubled at his manner--she had not imagined the wound would have been so deep. Her own shallow nature could not comprehend the depths, the intensity, the passion of love. To her it had appeared that Stuart would of course be angry. As a proud man, that was but natural, and she had expected to see him defiant, hard, reckless. This strange silence, this quiet misery amazed and annoyed her. But she was outwardly at her best all this time. She never spoke to her cousin respecting their former confidences. She made him feel rather than know the depths of her womanly sympathy, thus making her worldly tact appear as innate refinement and tender delicacy. She moved about as in harmony with his gloomy thoughts; her laughter never jarred; her voice often soothed him; and last, but not least, she warded off any attacks from Mrs. Crosbie, whose brow contracted in many an ominous frown because of what she termed her son’s folly and want of dignity.