"Indeed!" he said, incredulously. "And if not to propitiate Gertrude, what on earth was your motive?" "The foolish one," she returned, getting very angry, "of wishing to spare myself the pain of saying, and you the pain--or rather, perhaps, I should say, the mortification, of hearing what I would much rather never have been driven to put into words." "And what may that be?" he asked, growing paler than was his wont, but with a sneer on his face that made Roma, in her exaggerated indignation, marvel that ever she could have thought him handsome. "The truth," she replied, vehemently, "the plain state of the case-- namely, that there is one woman who does _not_ think you irresistible; who would not marry you, hardly, I think, to save her life; who pities the woman that does marry you--vain, selfish, shallow as you are!" She stopped, breathless with excitement. "Thank you," said Beauchamp. He was still standing before her, to all outward appearance composedly enough, but still with the same disfiguring sneer over his handsome features. "Thank you," he repeated, slowly. "One is never too old to learn, I suppose. I thought I knew something of women; till to-night I thought I knew something of _you_--I imagined you refined, gentle, and womanly, but you have undeceived me. Still, of course, pray understand how sincerely I thank you for your plain speaking; the only pity is that you have so long deferred it, out of regard, no doubt, for the pain--oh no, by-the-bye, I am too shallow to be capable of feeling pain, mortification I think you kindly called it--it might cause me." He turned to go. The intensity of wounded feeling from which he was suffering, the utter unexpectedness of the blow, had given him for the time a sort of dignity, a power of retort new to him. Never before, perhaps, had Roma been so near admiring him as now, when the mixture of truth in his sarcastic words stung her so deeply. A sort of remorse seized upon her--she felt that she had gone too far. Poor Beauchamp! he might be all she had taunted him with being, but had he deserved such treatment at her hands? "Beauchamp," she exclaimed, appealingly, "Beauchamp, don't go like that. Forgive me. I have said more than I meant. You have been mistaken all along. You don't really care for me in _that_ way. Some day you will see you have never done so. Oh, do let us be friends in the old way; you don't know how I wish it!" At the first sound of her voice he had stopped short and half turned round. A foolish, wild idea flashed through his mind that possibly he had been premature in believing her, that now at the last moment, when she judged him all but lost to her, he was yet to see this proud woman at his feet. But in a moment her words undeceived him.