‘You do me a great deal of honour to remember anything about my affairs,’ said Ben. ‘Are you going to the river?’ and he turned with her to go down in the direction she had been taking. ‘Have you a boat?’ ‘Yes; the old gardener put us across,’ said Millicent. ‘You do not give me credit for any friendly feeling, and you always try to get rid of me, Mr. Renton. Oh, indeed, I can see it very well. I do not feel angry, for perhaps you have had provocation; though I can see it very well. But it would not do you any harm, nor me much good--except for old friendship’s sake,--if you were to answer my question. Is it all right?’ ‘It is perfectly right,’ said Ben, with a little bow. ‘I don’t know that there was ever any doubt on that subject. I must thank you for taking so much interest in us and our affairs.’ ‘That is all you say now,’ cried Millicent, with ready tears springing to her eyes; and tears come as readily from mortification and the passion of anger as from any other cause. ‘You would not have answered me like that once. Ah, Ben Renton, how much you are changed!’ ‘I think it is very natural I should be,’ said Ben. ‘You are changed, too, Mrs. Rich; though not in anything external,--unless it may be for the better, if that were possible,’ he added, with a certain grudge in his words. The man was but a man, and they were extorted from him by the beauty which could neither be mistaken nor overlooked. ‘If I am not changed in externals, you may be sure I am changed in nothing else,’ said Millicent, turning upon him with a smile of such eager sweetness and hope, that it almost reached his heart. She, poor creature! believed she was winning him back. The thought quickened all her powers, quickened the very springs of being in her. She forgot Mary, and the attitude which for a moment had driven her to despair. So much the better if he had been Mary’s lover,--a touch of triumph the more! ‘I have had a great deal to endure since we parted,’ she went on. ‘Oh, you cannot tell all I have had to bear! And I thought time had worn me and aged me, and that you would scarcely have known me again. But nothing has ever changed me at heart.’ ‘Mrs. Rich, you forget that this conveys very little information to me,’ said Ben, moved with sudden vindictiveness. ‘In those days of which you speak,--and I don’t know why you should speak of them, the recollection cannot be a pleasant one,--I remember clearly enough what a fool I made of myself. My heart was open enough,--ass as I was,--but I don’t know now, and I did not then, what were the sentiments of yours,--if indeed----’ ‘I had one!’ cried Millicent. ‘Oh, that you should say this to me! And yet I feel that I deserve it. I acted as if I had none. What can I say or do to make you know how sorry I am? Sorry is too poor a word. Oh, Ben, I know I ought not to say it; but if either then or now you could have seen into my heart----’