"The Westoria lands," he repeated, slowly. "He has interested himself in them too much," she said. "Things don't go as easily as he imagined they would, and it annoys him. To-day"-- "What happened to-day?" Laurence asked, as she stopped. "It was not very much," she said; "but it was unlike him. He was a little angry." "With whom?" "With me, I think. Lately I have thought I would like to go abroad, and I have spoken of it to him once or twice, and he has rather put it off; and to-day I wanted to speak of it again, and it seemed the wrong time, somehow, and he was a trifle irritable about it. He has not always been quite himself this winter, but he has never been irritable with me. That isn't like him, you know." "No, it isn't like him," was Laurence's comment. Afterward, when he was going away, he asked her a question: "Do you wish very much to go abroad?" he said. "Yes," she answered. "You think the change would do you good?" "Change often does one good," she replied. "I should like to try it." "I should like to try it myself," he said. "Go, if you can, though no one will miss you more than I shall." And, having said it, he took his departure. CHAPTER XXVI. But Bertha did not go abroad, and the season reached its height and its wane, and, though Miss Jessup began to refer occasionally to the much-to-be regretted delicacy of the charming Mrs. Amory's health, there seemed but little alteration in her mode of life. "I will confide to you," she said to Colonel Tredennis, "that I have set up this effective little air of extreme delicacy as I might set up a carriage,--if I needed one. It is one of my luxuries. Do you remember Lord Farintosh's tooth, which always ached when he was invited out to dinner and did not want to go,--the tooth which Ethel Newcome said nothing would induce him to part with? My indisposition is like that. I refuse to become convalescent. Don't prescribe for me, I beg of you." It was true, as she had said, that the colonel presented himself at the house less often than had been his wont, and that his visits were more frequently for Janey than for herself. "You will never hold out your hand to me when I shall not be ready to take it," he had said; but she did not hold out her hand, and there was nothing that he could do, and if he went to her he must find himself confronted with things he could not bear to see, and so he told himself that, until he was needed, it was best that he should stay away, or go only now and then. But he always knew what she was doing. The morning papers told him that she was involved in the old, unceasing round of excitement,--announcing that she was among the afternoon callers; that she received at home; that she dined, lunched, danced, appeared at charitable entertainments, and was seen at the theatre. It became his habit to turn unconsciously to the society column before he read anything else, though he certainly found himself none the happier for its perusal.