'With what is your mind struggling?' asked Bella, with reference to his broken words. 'I know not how to explain.' 'You do look troubled, Captain Wilmot. In your usually merry face one never sees such an expression as it wears now,' said she, surveying his features with her sweet and earnest eyes, full of great and sudden sympathy. 'What--amid a scene like this to-night--this gay world of yours, rank and luxury around you--what mental pain have you to struggle with?' Jerry felt her slender fingers trembling in his hand, and he pressed them softly and caressingly. 'You know not all I have endured of doubt and love too, Bella, since--since--' 'Since when?' she asked, impatiently, but in a low voice. 'That interview I had with your father.' Her dilated eyes expressed great wonder at this unexpected reply. 'What passed between you?' she asked. 'I cannot tell you--now at least--and so infuse an aspect of selfishness, with bitterness too, in the sweetness of a moment like this.' 'Jerry!' exclaimed the girl, bewildered by his manner. His name escaped her lips almost unconsciously, but the sound of it then again, as in his boyish days, made every pulse quicken and his heart to thrill. 'Bella, my darling! I love you. You know that I have always loved you, and never anyone else.' (Though this was not precisely the case, just then Jerry thought it was.) 'I have struggled against that love till I can do so no longer'--(Why? thought Bella, with anger growing in her breast)--'struggled against it, but it has overpowered me at last; and though the world I live in might view the avowal with contempt and derision, and utterly mistake the spirit in which I make it, I do love you dearly, Bella,' he added in a low, beseeching voice. All unknown to himself, this speech in its phraseology was about the most blundering he could have addressed to the haughty Bella Chevenix! Her beautiful eyes were sparkling with indignation now; her face was blanched and very pale, for she loved Jerry dearly, though at that moment only anger and bitterness were swelling in her breast. She snatched her hand from his clasp, and, cresting up her head, said proudly, 'This world of yours shall never know from me at least that you have condescended to address me thus. You deem it condescension; I an insult!' 'An insult, Bella?' 'Enough of this: let us rejoin the dancers.' Jerry was utterly bewildered, and led her from the conservatory, on emerging from which the first eyes that met them were those of Lady Wilmot, and they wore an expression at once cold, inquiring, and reprehensive, which added to the annoyance of Bella, who hurriedly, and without a word of adieu to Jerry, took the arm of her father. The latter had been enjoying himself after his own fashion during a protracted visit to the supper-room, and was by no means yet prepared to withdraw.