 the more trial for me.'
'But you endured it. You say it was only nearly an outbreak. You parted friends? I am sure of that.'
'Yes, it would have been rather too bad not to do that.'
'Then why do you scold yourself, when you really had the victory?'
'The victory will be if the inward feeling as well as the outward token is ever subdued.'
'O, that must be in time, of course. Only let me hear how you got on with Colonel Deane.'
'He was very good-natured, and would have laughed it off, but Philip went with me, and looked grand, and begged in a solemn way that no more might be said. I could have got on better alone; but Philip was very kind, or, as you say, gracious.'
'And provoking,' added Amy, 'only I believe you do not like me to say so.'
'It is more agreeable to hear you call him so at this moment than is good for me. I have no right to complain, since I gave the offence.'
'The offence?'
'The absenting myself.'
'Oh! that you did because you thought it right.'
'I want to be clear that it was right.'
'What do you mean?' cried she, astonished. 'It was a great piece of self-denial, and I only felt it wrong not to be doing the same.'
'Nay, how should such creatures as you need the same discipline as I?'
She exclaimed to herself how far from his equal she was—how weak, idle, and self-pleasing she felt herself to be; but she could not say so—the words would not come; and she only drooped her little head, humbled by his treating her as better than himself.
He proceeded:—
'Something wrong I have done, and I want the clue. Was it self-will in choosing discipline contrary to your mother's judgment? Yet she could not know all. I thought it her kindness in not liking me to lose the pleasure. Besides, one must act for oneself, and this was only my own personal amusement.'
'Yes,' said Amy, timidly hesitating.
'Well?' said he, with the gentle, deferential tone that contrasted with his hasty, vehement self-accusations. 'Well?' and he waited, though not so as to hurry or frighten her, but to encourage, by
