to explain and have done with, caused an exaggeration of the
difficulty in his own mind. He felt that he ought of course to
justify himself before Mrs. Ogle, and would have been capable of
doing so had only Harriet taken the same sensible view; but her
apparent distress seemed--even to him--so much more like
conscious guilt than troubled innocence, that such a task would cost
him the acutest suffering. For nearly an hour he argued with her,
trying to convince her how impossible it was that the woman who had
surprised them should harbour any injurious suspicions.

"But she knows--" began Harriet, and then stopped, her eyes
falling.

"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get
no reply to his question. However, his arguments seemed at length to
have a calming effect, and, as he took leave, he even affected to
laugh at the whole affair. For all that, he had never suffered such
mental trouble in his life as during this visit and throughout the
evening which followed. The mere thought of having been obliged to
discuss such things with his cousin filled him with inexpressible
shame and misery. Waymark came to spend the evening with him, but
found poor entertainment. Several times Julian was on the point of
relating what had happened, and asking for advice, but he found it
impossible to broach the subject. There was an ever-recurring anger
against Harriet in his mind, too, for which at the same time he
reproached himself. He dreaded the next meeting between them.

Harriet, though herself quite innocent of fine feeling and nice
complexities of conscience, was well aware of the existence of such
properties in her cousin. She neither admired nor despised him for