"How can I work now?" he said again. "I shall be called to the bar of course; there is no difficulty in that; and may perhaps earn what will make us decently respectable. But the spirit, the high spirit is gone. She is better pleased that it should be so. She is intolerant of enthusiasm. Is it not a pity, Miss Gauntlet, that we should be so different?" What could Adela say to him? Every word that he uttered was to her a truth--a weary, melancholy truth; a repetition of that truth which was devouring her own heart. She sympathized with him fully, cordially, ardently. She said no word absolutely in dispraise of Caroline; but she admitted, and at last admitted so often, that, according to her thinking, Caroline was wrong. "Wrong!" Bertram would shout. "Can there be a doubt? Can any one with a heart doubt?" Adela said, "No; no one with a heart could doubt." "She has no heart," said Bertram. "She is lovely, clever, fascinating, elegant. She has everything a woman should have except a heart--except a heart." And then, as he turned away his face, Adela could see that he brushed his hand across his eyes. What could she do but weep too? And is it not known to all men--certainly it is to all women--how dangerous are such tears? Thus during his stay at Hurst Staple, Bertram was frequently at West Putford. But he observed that Adela was not often at his cousin's vicarage, and that Arthur was very seldom at West Putford. The families, it was clear, were on as good terms as ever. Adela and Mary and Sophia would be together, and old Mr. Gauntlet would dine at Hurst Staple, and Arthur would talk about the old rector freely enough. But Bertram rarely saw Adela unless he went to the rectory, and though he dined there with the Wilkinson girls three or four times, Arthur only dined there once. "Have you and Arthur quarrelled?" said he to Adela one day, laughing as he spoke. "Oh, no," said she; but she could not keep down her rebellious colour as she answered him, and Bertram at once took the hint. To her he said nothing further on that matter. "And why don't you marry, Arthur?" he asked the next morning. And Arthur also blushed, not thinking then of Adela Gauntlet, but of that pledge which he had given to Lord Stapledean--a pledge of which he had repented every day since he had given it.