It was hard work to part from Amy; to leave the two girls whom he had known in those happy days at Barton Hall; to erase the past, and look forward into a future in which there were no familiar faces; but this was his penance, and he was willing now to abide by it. If that most unkind suspicion of mercenary motives (which Lionel had not strength of mind enough to keep back in the personal explanations) set forth in a previous chapter, had not rankled in the mind of the Countess, the parting would have been no small trial on her part. She would not have given any outward sign of her feelings had her heart been breaking; but Lionel’s unmanly suspicion had almost entirely removed the last fragment of her romantic love for him. Setting this aside, her honour as a wife, her gratitude towards Lord Verner, and a strong sense of duty (kept in constant excitement by Mrs. Arthur Phillips), would have saved her from any further exhibition of strong feeling. It is not in human nature to maintain a full control over the passions, and particularly over that love between man and woman which God has planted in the human heart for His own wise and beneficent purposes. When that great instinct of nature, which, secretly and unseen, draws two souls together, is set at nought, certain sorrow is the result. Happiness may come in time to each of those who have broken this first instinctive contract of nature; but it is a very limited happiness compared with that perfect bliss which true lovers feel. The Countess of Verner was as happy as a woman can be who had loved and lost, and married for revenge and ambition. Regard and respect ripened by degrees into what may be called sincere matrimonial friendship, and this was still further enhanced by the discovery of her old lover’s unworthy suspicion about the sincerity of her love. She vowed to Mrs. Phillips, that had she been free to accept Lionel Hammerton, and he had sued at her feet with ten times the honeyed sweetness of his eloquence in the Barton gardens, the knowledge of his unworthy doubt of her true faith would have made her refuse him, had he been twenty times Lionel Hammerton and her first love.