"No; and it is just because she is doing it herself that I am sorry for her," replied Bessie. "Please don't keep me, Mr. Sefton; you do not understand--how can you? If he had died, if anything else had separated them, it would be so much easier to bear, but to do it herself, and then to be so sorry for it afterward--oh, how miserable that must be!" and Bessie's voice became a little unsteady as she hastily bade him good night. CHAPTER XVI. A NOTE FROM HATTY. Bessie knew that she would find Edna in her mother's dressing room--a large, comfortable room, much used by both mother and daughter when they were tired or indisposed. Mrs. Sefton generally used it as a morning-room, and it was fitted up somewhat luxuriously. Bessie found Edna lying on a couch in her white tea-gown, with a novel in her hand. The pink shade of the lamp threw a rosy glow over everything, and at first sight Bessie thought she looked much as usual; her first words, too, were said in her ordinary tone. "So you have found your way up at last," she exclaimed, throwing down her book with an air of disgust and weariness; "my head ached this afternoon, and so mamma thought I had better stay here quietly." "Is your head better now?" "Yes, thanks; only this book is so stupid. I think novels are stupid nowadays; the heroes are so gaudy, and the heroines have not a spark of spirit. You may talk to me instead, if you like. What have you been doing with yourself all day?" Bessie was dumb with amazement. Was this pride or was Edna acting a part, and pretending not to care? She could break her lover's heart one minute and talk of novels the next. Bessie's simplicity was at fault; she could make nothing of this. "Why are you looking at me in that way?" asked Edna fretfully, on receiving no answer; and as she raised herself on the cushions, Bessie could see her face more plainly. It looked very pale, and her eyes were painfully bright, and then she gave a hard little laugh that had no mirth in it. "So mamma or Richard has been talking to you! What a transparent little creature you are, Bessie! You are dreadfully shocked, are you not, that I have sent Neville about his business?" "Oh, Edna, please don't talk about it in that way." "If I talk about it at all it must be in my own way. If Neville thought I could not live without him, he finds himself mistaken now. I am not the sort of girl who could put up with tyranny; other people may submit to be ordered about and treated like a child, but I am not one of them." "Edna, surely you consider that you owe a duty to the man you have promised to marry." "I owe him none--I will never owe him any duty." And here Edna's manner became excited. "It is mamma I ought to obey, and I will not always yield to her; but I have never given Neville the right to lecture and control me; no man shall--no man!" angrily. "Edna, how can you bear to part with Mr. Sinclair, when he is so good and loves you so much?"