It was not the pain she might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon to endure this wrong. Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not, after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada's nature it marked serious disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in, that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been lifted. Is it not so often?--what we want comes, and it is no longer what we want,--the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away, and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel's face, and stretch out our hands with vain weeping. Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada's dreams, and there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada, and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt compensations to be her due. "I am afraid you have another headache," said Anthony, standing before her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.