"Of course you cannot!" she responded tranquilly, her eyes resting upon me with a curious expression, as we paused for an instant under the deep shade of a chestnut tree before entering our own grounds--"I never supposed you could, and unlike the ordinary _femme incomprise_, I have never blamed you for your want of comprehension. It has taken me some time to understand myself, and even now I am not quite sure that I have gauged the depths or shallownesses of my own nature correctly. But on this matter of Mavis Clare, can you not imagine that badness may hate goodness? That the confirmed drunkard may hate the sober citizen? That the outcast may hate the innocent maiden? And that it is possible that I,--reading life as I do, and finding it loathsome in many of its aspects,--distrusting men and women utterly,--and being destitute of any faith in God,--may hate,--yes _hate_,"--and she clenched her hand on a tuft of drooping leaves and scattered the green fragments at her feet--"a woman who finds life beautiful, and God existent,--who takes no part in our social shams and slanders,--and who in place of my self-torturing spirit of analysis, has secured an enviable fame and the honour of thousands, allied to a serene content? Why it would be something worth living for, to make such a woman wretched for once in her life!--but, as she is constituted, it is impossible to do it." She turned from me and walked slowly onward,--I following in a pained silence. "If you do not mean to be her friend, you should tell her so,"--I said presently--"You heard what she said about pretended protestations of regard?" "I heard,"--she replied morosely--"She is a clever woman, Geoffrey, and you may trust her to find me out without any explanation!" As she said this, I raised my eyes and looked full at her,--her exceeding beauty was becoming almost an agony to my sight, and in a sudden fool's paroxysm of despair I exclaimed-- "O Sibyl, Sibyl! Why were you made as you are!" "Ah, why indeed!" she rejoined, with a faint mocking smile--"And why, being made as I am, was I born an Earl's daughter? If I had been a drab of the street, I should have been in my proper place,--and novels would have been written about me, and plays,--and I might have become such a heroine as should cause all good men to weep for joy because of my generosity in encouraging their vices! But as an Earl's daughter, respectably married to a millionaire, am a mistake of nature. Yet nature does make mistakes sometimes Geoffrey, and when she does they are generally irremediable!" We had now reached our own grounds, and I walked, in miserable mood, beside her across the lawn towards the house. "Sibyl,"--I said at last--"I had hoped you and Mavis Clare might be friends." She laughed.