softening which had been visible in her face, and she sunk again into
the impassive calm which made Christian Grey so totally different,
from Christian Oakley.

She rose up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and arranged her hair,
looking into the mirror with eyes that evidently saw nothing. Then she
knelt before the fire, warming her ice-cold hands on which the two-
weeks' familiar ring seemed to shine with a fatal glitter. She kept
moving it up and down with a nervous habit that she was trying vainly
to conquer.

"A mistake," she muttered, "Perhaps my marriage, too, was a mistake,
irretrievable, irremediable, as he may himself think now, only he was
too kind to let me see it. What am I to do? Nothing. I can do nothing.
'Until death us do part.' Do I wish for death--my death, of course--to
come and part us?"

She could not, even to herself, answer that question.

"What was he saying--that God teaches us by our very errors--that there
is no such thing as 'might have been?' He thinks so, and he is very
wise, far wiser and better than I am. I might have loved him. Oh that I
had only waited till I did really love him, instead of fancying it enough
that he loved me. But I must not think. I have done with thinking. It
would drive me out of my senses."

She started up, and stood gazing round the cheerful, bright, handsome
room, where every luxury that a comfortable income could give had
been provided for her comfort, every little fancy and taste she had been
remembered, with a tender mindfulness that would have made the heart