It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past, the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!) When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation. The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them, where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness! And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.