Nevertheless, although her reflections could not so much as touch the possibility of discontent on her lover's part, she was aware now and then that he was both dull and moody, and it was in her eyes one of the appointed pleasures of her lot that Mr Warren should be more attentive and bent upon displaying his devotion than in the days which preceded her engagement Mr Bennett used to laugh, and declare that Miles would be jealous; but he was an honourable and unsuspicious man, more pleased at an occasion for a joke than troubled by fear of mischief-making, nor indeed had the thought of an actual preference to Anthony--Anthony, be it observed, comprising all that he could give--entered further into Ada's head than her uncle's. It was simply that Mr Warren's attentions and little compliments were agreeable to her, and she had never been accustomed to deny herself what she liked. Anthony himself was indifferent about the matter, considering young Warren an empty-pated and harmless youth, and wondering a little that Ada should make him welcome to the house, but beyond that not troubling his head. The Bennetts were so hospitable, their house so open, that it was hardly possible to conceive a shutting of doors upon any one; and if such a thing were needed, there was a natural solution in the kindly interest Mr Bennett was known to show towards the young men who worked with him. Both Mr Bennett and Anthony were ignorant of a good deal that passed, such as meetings which were certainly not the result of chance, and which Underham discussed actively. But after what has been told, Anthony Miles could scarcely have borne to have found fault with Ada, even if he had known the utmost. He was oppressed with a terrible sense of wronging her, which, though it often produced intense nervous irritation, made him the more scrupulously polite in every word and action. Moreover, he was hesitating between two courses, and rather bent upon dissection of his own motives than upon weighing Adas merits and demerits, from which, with an instinctive generosity, he recoiled at such a time. Since the discovery of his own feelings, it was impossible for him not to realise the question of right or wrong involved, that there were conflicting claims; he tried to think of it with cold words, to force himself to judge as if from the outside, but more often he felt with a blank despair that he could do nothing except let matters drift on where the current carried them. Men sometimes call that resignation which is no more than a fear of facing pain, and the deception may be so subtle that it evades discovery until too late.