"That is nonsense, Gertrude," answered Roma, so gently that the words did not sound disrespectful. "I have no intention of dictating to you. I have not even hinted at finding fault with what you said and allowed Mrs Chancellor to say, though I might perhaps be excused if I thought it hard that I should be so discussed by you with a person whom you have not known a fortnight; and it is nonsense for you to pretend that you think me capable of low eavesdropping. You _know_ you don't think so, Gertrude. Of course you know that my overhearing anything was purely accidental, and in your heart, Gertrude, you are bitterly sorry, not only that I overheard what I did, but that there was anything of the kind for me to hear." Gertrude was silent. "I don't know if I am or not," she said, half petulantly. "I don't want to distrust you, Roma. If you heard all, you must have heard me say I could not bear to think you had deceived me." "And why should you think so?" exclaimed Roma, more vehemently. "I have _never_ deceived you, dear Gertrude. You have been very good to me all these years since my mother died and I was left alone; there has never been any cloud between us, except about this unfortunate infatuation of your brother's. I am not, in a sense, surprised at a woman like Mrs Chancellor thinking of me as she does--she has no reason to like me, and imagines me in her way--but _you_, Gertrude, ah! that is very different! Why should I deceive you as to my feelings to Beauchamp; what good would it do me if what Mrs Chancellor thinks were true, to conceal it from you? Oh, Gertrude, you know it has been all on his side all along; you cannot say I have ever encouraged him in the very least?" "No-o," said Gertrude, reluctantly. "_Directly_, you certainly have not done so. But I don't know, Roma. I wish you wouldn't ask me. As Mrs Chancellor said once, you may have been deceiving yourself." "I have not then; I have done nothing of the kind," replied Roma, her dark eyes flashing as no light grey ones could do. "I tell you again, Gertrude, as I have told you a hundred times, I do not care for Beauchamp a straw, not in the way you mean. It is a perfect mystery to me what other women find so irresistible in him. I know him too well I suppose. To me he is the very antipodes of the sort of man I could care for. Selfish, weak, vain. He has good, qualities too of course, I know that as well or better than you do, but his faults and foibles are the _sort_ that in a man I could least forget. There now, have I spoken plainly enough to convince you at last? I don't want to offend you, Gertrude," seeing that Mrs Eyrecourt, with true womanly inconsistency, now looked rather sulky at this unflattering depreciation of her Adonis; "you have forced it upon yourself. Good heavens! how unreasonable you are." "You are forgetting yourself, Roma," said Gertrude, coldly.