"You needn't think you will make me angry, and get rid of me in that way, Roma," he said coolly. "You have tried that plan successfully several times, but I understand you better now, I am glad to say. Yes, I understand you thoroughly now at last, and I will have no more mystifications and shillyshallying." It was a peculiar sort of love-making. There was a tone of triumph in his way of speaking that irritated Miss Eyrecourt even while it bewildered her. "What do you mean, Beauchamp?" she asked, really at a loss to understand what he was driving at. "You know what I mean," he answered; and Roma could see that he put some force on himself to keep down his rising irritation. "You know perfectly what I mean. Not many hours ago you told Gertrude you were willing to make a sacrifice of yourself for her," (this was what after much cogitation Captain Chancellor had made out of Floss's "satin flies," and the look of utter astonishment on Roma's face told him that his shot had hit the mark); "have you forgotten that you were sacrificing some one else as well as yourself? All these years, Roma, I have waited, if not always patiently, at least, more so than many men would have done," ("yes," thought Roma, "and amused yourself very agreeably between times,") "and now I think I deserve my reward. I have always suspected what I now know, that Gertrude was the real difficulty; but for this suspicion your conduct would certainly have been most incomprehensible to me, still till to-day I hardly realised that she could carry her unjustifiable tyranny so far, or that you could so tamely yield to it." Here and there during this speech Roma had softened a little to her would-be lover, had even pitied him a little when it dawned upon her that the truth she had no option now but to tell him in unmistakable words might after all cause him some real pain: but the confident belief in the irresistible nature of his own charms, calmly inferred in his closing words, provoked her out of such weakness. She felt no difficulty now in hardening her heart. "How you have got your knowledge, Beauchamp, of what passed between Gertrude and me to-day certainly baffles my comprehension; but, however you have done so, you must allow me to tell you that it is a very garbled version of the real conversation that has come to you," began Roma. "I don't believe it," interrupted the young man, hotly. "You are trying to mystify me again. Can you deny that Gertrude's interference has gone the length of driving you from Winsley while I am there?" "Certainly I deny it," she replied. "It is perfectly true that Gertrude and I agreed together that it would not be unadvisable for me to leave Winsley for a time." "For the time of my being there?" he interrupted again. "Well, yes, if you force me to say so, that was the time we proposed for my absence. But _Gertrude_ was not the originator of the plan. It was my own wish."