There was not one reviving touch of girlish admiration, not one thrill of self-complacent emotion, to see, what she could not help seeing, under his studiedly courteous manner, that he had forgotten, and meant her to feel he had forgotten, not a jot of the past.

Whatever the episode of Susan Bennett might mean--if, indeed, such a man was not capable of carrying on a dozen such little episodes--his manner to Christian plainly showed that he admired her still; that he saw no difference between the pretty maiden Christian Oakley and the matron Christian Grey, and expressed this fact by tender tones and glances, alas! only too familiarly known by her of old.

"How dared he ?" Christian was a very simple woman.

She knew nothing at all of that fashionable world which, in its _blas_ craving for excitement, delights, both in life and in books, to tread daintily on the very confines of guilt.

She was not ignorant.