“To give her pain?” said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her eyebrows raised.

“I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.”

“Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best of men, in spite of all.”

“I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him, saying so to you,” returned the Secretary, with the same steady look, “but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.”

Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.