At first I am too inert even to think, even to lift my hand to protect my cheek from Vick's muddy paws, who, annoyed at my evident inattention to her presence, is sitting on my lap, making little impatient _clawings_ at my defenseless countenance. But gradually on the river of recollection all the incidents of the morning flow through my mind. In more startling relief than ever, the astounding change in Roger, wrought by those ill-starred two hours, stands out. Is it possible that I may have been attributing it to a wrong cause? Doubtless, the first interview with the woman he had loved, and who had thrown him over (by-the-by, how forgiving men are!)--yes, the first, probably, since they had stood in the relation of betrothed people to each other--must have been full of pain. Doubtless, the contrast between the crude gawkiness of the raw girl he has drifted into marrying--for I suppose it was more accident than any thing else--with the mature and subtile grace, the fine and low-voiced sweetness of the woman whom his whole heart and soul and taste chose and approved, must have struck him with keen force. I expected _that_: it would not have taken me by surprise. If he had emerged from among the laurestines, depressed, and vainly struggling for a factitious cheerfulness, I think I could have understood it. I think I could have borne with it, could have tried meekly to steal back into his heart again, to win him back, in despite of ignorance, gawkiness, and all other my drawbacks, by force of sheer love. But the change was surely too abrupt to be accounted for on this hypothesis. Would _Roger_, my pattern of courtesy--Roger, who shrinks from hurting the meanest beggar's feelings--would he, in such plain terms, have deplored and wished undone our marriage, if it were only suffering to _himself_ that it had entailed? Has his unselfish chivalry gone the way of Algy's brotherly love? Impossible! the more I think of it, the more unlikely it seems--the more certain it appears to me that I must look elsewhere for the cause of the alteration that has so heavily darkened my day.