When Lady Caroline Mansergh was alone in her own room after this conversation, she reflected long and deeply upon the effect which the receipt of that letter would probably produce upon Walter Joyce, and was sufficiently interested to analyse her own feelings in regard to it. Was she sorry or glad that the intended match had been broken off, and that Joyce was now, so far as his heart was concerned, a free man? That he was free she was certain; that he would never return to the old allegiance she was positive. Lady Caroline in her worldly experience had frequently come across cases of the kind, where the tender regret which at first forbade any harsh mention, scarcely any harsh thought of the false one, had in a very short time given place to a feeling of mortified vanity and baffled desire, which prompted the frankest outpourings, and made itself heard in the bitterest objurgations. The question was, how it affected her. On the whole, she thought that she was pleased at the result. She did not attempt to hide from herself that she had a certain regard for this young man, though of the nature of that regard she had scarcely troubled herself to inquire. One thing she knew, that it was very different from what she had at first intended it should be, from what in the early days of their acquaintance she had allowed it to be. Of course, with such a man, flirtation, in its ordinary sense, was out of the question; she would as soon have thought of flirting with the Great Pyramid as with Walter Joyce. In its place there had existed a kind of friendly interest; but Lady Caroline was fully cognisant that, on her side, that friendly interest had been deepening and strengthening, until, after a little self-examination, she felt forced to confess to herself that it would bear another name. Then came the question, And if it did, what matter? She had never particularly set herself up as a strict observant of the conventionalities or the fetish worship of society; on the contrary, her conduct in that respect had been rather iconoclastic. There need be no surprise, therefore, on the part of the world if she chose to marry out of what was supposed to be her "set" and station in society; and if there had been, she was quite strong-minded enough to laugh at it. But to a woman of Lady Caroline's refinement it was necessary that her husband should be a gentleman, and it was necessary for her pride that, if not her equal in rank, he should not merely be her superior in talent, but should be admitted to be so. Under the fresh disposition of circumstances she saw no reason why this should not be. Walter Joyce would go to London, would there resume his newspaper occupations, and would probably, as she guessed from occasional hints he had recently let fall, turn his attention more to politics than he had hitherto done. He must be clever, she thought. She knew him to be clever, in a woman's notion of cleverness,