IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY IS LED TO THINK THAT THE ELEMENTS HAVE
CONSPIRED AGAINST HIM
Clara had not taken many steps in the garden before she learned how
great was her debt of gratitude to Colonel De Craye. Willoughby and
her father were awaiting her. De Craye, with his ready comprehension of
circumstances, turned aside unseen among the shrubs. She advanced
slowly.
"The vapours, we may trust, have dispersed?" her father hailed her.
"One word, and these discussions are over, we dislike them equally,"
said Willoughby.
"No scenes," Dr. Middleton added. "Speak your decision, my girl, pro
forma, seeing that he who has the right demands it, and pray release
me."
Clara looked at Willoughby.
"I have decided to go to Miss Dale for her advice."
There was no appearance in him of a man that has been shot.
"To Miss Dale?--for advice?"
Dr Middleton invoked the Furies. "What is the signification of this new
freak?"
"Miss Dale must be consulted, papa."
"Consulted with reference to the disposal of your hand in marriage?"
"She must be."
"Miss Dale, do you say?"
"I do, Papa."
Dr Middleton regained his natural elevation from the bend of body
habitual with men of an established sanity, paedagogues and others, who
are called on at odd intervals to inspect the magnitude of the
infinitesimally absurd in human nature: small, that is, under the light
of reason, immense in the realms of madness.
His daughter profoundly confused him. He swelled out his chest,
remarking to Willoughby: "I do not wonder at your scared expression of
countenance, my friend. To discover yourself engaged to a girl mad as
Cassandra, without a boast of the distinction of her being sun-struck,
can be no specially comfortable enlightenment. I am opposed to delays,
and I will not have a breach of faith committed by daughter of mine."
"Do not repeat those words," Clara said to Willoughby. He started. She
had evidently come armed. But how, within so short a space? What could
have instructed her? And in his bewilderment he gazed hurriedly above,
gulped air, and cried: "Scared, sir? I am not aware that my countenance
can show a scare. I am not accustomed to sue for long: I am unable to
sustain the part of humble supplicant. She puts me out of harmony with
creation--We are plighted, Clara. It is pure waste of time to speak of
soliciting advice on the subject."
"Would it be a breach of faith for me to break my engagement?" she
said.
"You ask?"
"It is a breach of sanity to propound the interrogation," said her
father.
She looked at Willoughby. "Now?"
He shrugged haughtily.
"Since last night?" she said.
"Last night?"
"Am I not released?"
"Not by me."
"By your act."
"My dear Clara!"
"Have you not virtually disengaged me?"
"I who claim you as mine?"
"Can you?"
"I do and must."
"After last night?"
"Tricks! shufflings! jabber of a barbarian woman upon the evolutions of
a serpent!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "You were to capitulate, or to
furnish reasons for your refusal. You have none. Give him your hand,
girl, according to the compact. I praised you to him for returning
within the allotted term, and now forbear to disgrace yourself and me."
"Is he perfectly free to offer his? Ask him, papa."
"Perform your duty. Do let us have peace!"
"Perfectly free! as on the day when I offered it first." Willoughby
frankly waved his honourable hand.
His face was blanched: enemies in the air seemed to have whispered
things to her: he doubted the fidelity of the Powers above.
"Since last night?" said she.
"Oh! if you insist, I reply, since last night."
"You know what I mean, Sir Willoughby."
"Oh! certainly."
"You speak the truth?"
"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you
explain what you mean, epitome that you are of all the contradictions
and mutabilities ascribed to women from the beginning! 'Certainly', he
says, and knows no more than I. She begs grace for an hour, and returns
with a fresh store of evasions, to insult the man she has injured. It
is my humiliation to confess that our share in this contract is rescued
from public ignominy by his generosity. Nor can I congratulate him on
his fortune, should he condescend to bear with you to the utmost; for
instead of the young woman I supposed myself to be bestowing on him, I
see a fantastical planguncula enlivened by the wanton tempers of a
nursery chit. If one may conceive a meaning in her, in miserable
apology for such behaviour, some spirit of jealousy informs the girl."
"I can only remark that there is no foundation for it," said
Willoughby. "I am willing to satisfy you, Clara. Name the person who
discomposes you. I can scarcely imagine one to exist: but who can
tell?"
She could name no person. The detestable imputation of jealousy would
be confirmed if she mentioned a name: and indeed Laetitia was not to be
named.
He pursued his advantage: "Jealousy is one of the fits I am a stranger
to,--I fancy, sir, that gentlemen have dismissed it. I speak for
myself.--But I can make allowances. In some cases, it is considered a
compliment; and often a word will soothe it. The whole affair is so
senseless! However, I will enter the witness-box, or stand at the
prisoner's bar! Anything to quiet a distempered mind."
"Of you, sir," said Dr. Middleton, "might a parent be justly proud."
"It is not jealousy; I could not be jealous!" Clara cried, stung by the
very passion; and she ran through her brain for a suggestion to win a
sign of meltingness if not esteem from her father. She was not an iron
maiden, but one among the nervous natures which live largely in the
moment, though she was then sacrificing it to her nature's deep
dislike. "You may be proud of me again, papa."
She could hardly have uttered anything more impolitic.
"Optume; but deliver yourself ad rem," he rejoined, alarmingly
pacified. "Firmavit fidem. Do you likewise, and double on us no more
like puss in the field."
"I wish to see Miss Dale," she said.
Up flew the Rev. Doctor's arms in wrathful despair resembling an
imprecation.
"She is at the cottage. You could have seen her," said Willoughby.
Evidently she had not.
"Is it untrue that last night, between twelve o'clock and one, in the
drawing-room, you proposed marriage to Miss Dale?" He became convinced
that she must have stolen down-stairs during his colloquy with
Laetitia, and listened at the door.
"On behalf of old Vernon?" he said, lightly laughing. "The idea is not
novel, as you know. They are suited, if they could see it.--Laetitia
Dale and my cousin Vernon Whitford, sir."
"Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the
patience, Willoughby, of a husband!"
Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be
visible. He half yawned: "I claim no happier title, sir," and made
light of the weariful discussion.
Clara was shaken: she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or
that Colonel De Craye had guessed erroneously. It was too likely that
Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.
There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic
amazement of his face at her persistency in speaking of Miss Dale. She
could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the
suppositions to be against her. And unhappily all the Delicacies (a
doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into
difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all
the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides,
which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice
and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the
creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of
instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to
the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could not, as in a dear
melodrama, from the aim of a pointed finger denounce him, on the
testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed. She could
not even declare that she doubted his truthfulness. The refuge of a
sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood, were denied her
now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to
ladies of pure breeding.
"One more respite, papa," she implored him, bitterly conscious of the
closer tangle her petition involved, and, if it must be betrayed of
her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so
woefully Gordian that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention
of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the likeness of one of
earth, would have to cut it: her cry within, as she succumbed to
weakness, being fervider, "Anything but marry this one!" She was faint
with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their
imaginative energies hold revel uncontrolled and are projectively
desperate.
"No respite!" said Willoughby, genially.
"And I say, no respite!" observed her father. "You have assumed a
position that has not been granted you, Clara Middleton."
"I cannot bear to offend you, father."
"Him! Your duty is not to offend him. Address your excuses to him. I
refuse to be dragged over the same ground, to reiterate the same
command perpetually."
"If authority is deputed to me, I claim you," said Willoughby.
"You have not broken faith with me?"
"Assuredly not, or would it be possible for me to press my claim?"
"And join the right hand to the right," said Dr. Middleton; "no, it
would not be possible. What insane root she has been nibbling, I know
not, but she must consign herself to the guidance of those whom the
gods have not abandoned, until her intellect is liberated. She was once
. . . there: I look not back--if she it was, and no simulacrum of a
reasonable daughter. I welcome the appearance of my friend Mr.
Whitford. He is my sea-bath and supper on the beach of Troy, after the
day's battle and dust."
Vernon walked straight up to them: an act unusual with him, for he was
shy of committing an intrusion.
Clara guessed by that, and more by the dancing frown of speculative
humour he turned on Willoughby, that he had come charged in support of
her. His forehead was curiously lively, as of one who has got a
surprise well under, to feed on its amusing contents.
"Have you seen Crossjay, Mr. Whitford?" she said.
"I've pounced on Crossjay; his bones are sound."
"Where did he sleep?"
"On a sofa, it seems."
She smiled, with good hope--Vernon had the story.
Willoughby thought it just to himself that he should defend his measure
of severity.
"The boy lied; he played a double game."
"For which he should have been reasoned with at the Grecian portico of
a boy," said the Rev. Doctor.
"My system is different, sir. I could not inflict what I would not
endure myself"
"So is Greek excluded from the later generations; and you leave a
field, the most fertile in the moralities in youth, unplowed and
unsown. Ah! well. This growing too fine is our way of relapsing upon
barbarism. Beware of over-sensitiveness, where nature has plainly
indicated her alternative gateway of knowledge. And now, I presume, I
am at liberty."
"Vernon will excuse us for a minute or two."
"I hold by Mr. Whitford now I have him."
"I'll join you in the laboratory, Vernon," Willoughby nodded bluntly.
"We will leave them, Mr. Whitford. They are at the time-honoured
dissension upon a particular day, that, for the sake of dignity,
blushes to be named."
"What day?" said Vernon, like a rustic.
"THE day, these people call it."
Vernon sent one of his vivid eyeshots from one to the other. His eyes
fixed on Willoughby's with a quivering glow, beyond amazement, as if
his humour stood at furnace-heat, and absorbed all that came.
Willoughby motioned to him to go.
"Have you seen Miss Dale, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.
He answered, "No. Something has shocked her."
"Is it her feeling for Crossjay?"
"Ah!" Vernon said to Willoughby, "your pocketing of the key of
Crossjay's bedroom door was a master-stroke!"
The celestial irony suffused her, and she bathed and swam in it, on
hearing its dupe reply: "My methods of discipline are short. I was not
aware that she had been to his door."
"But I may hope that Miss Dale will see me," said Clara. "We are in
sympathy about the boy."
"Mr. Dale might be seen. He seems to be of a divided mind with his
daughter," Vernon rejoined. "She has locked herself up in her room."
"He is not the only father in that unwholesome predicament," said Dr
Middleton.
"He talks of coming to you, Willoughby."
"Why to me?" Willoughby chastened his irritation: "He will be welcome,
of course. It would be better that the boy should come."
"If there is a chance of your forgiving him," said Clara. "Let the
Dales know I am prepared to listen to the boy, Vernon. There can be no
necessity for Mr. Dale to drag himself here."
"How are Mr. Dale and his daughter of a divided mind, Mr. Whitford?"
said Clara.
Vernon simulated an uneasiness. With a vacant gaze that enlarged around
Willoughby and was more discomforting than intentness, he replied:
"Perhaps she is unwilling to give him her entire confidence, Miss
Middleton."
"In which respect, then, our situations present their solitary point of
unlikeness in resemblance, for I have it in excess," observed Dr.
Middleton.
Clara dropped her eyelids for the wave to pass over. "It struck me that
Miss Dale was a person of the extremest candour."
"Why should we be prying into the domestic affairs of the Dales?"
Willoughby interjected, and drew out his watch, merely for a diversion;
he was on tiptoe to learn whether Vernon was as well instructed as
Clara, and hung to the view that he could not be, while drenching in
the sensation that he was:--and if so, what were the Powers above but a
body of conspirators? He paid Laetitia that compliment. He could not
conceive the human betrayal of the secret. Clara's discovery of it had
set his common sense adrift.
"The domestic affairs of the Dales do not concern me," said Vernon.
"And yet, my friend," Dr. Middleton balanced himself, and with an air
of benevolent slyness the import of which did not awaken Willoughby,
until too late, remarked: "They might concern you. I will even add,
that there is a probability of your being not less than the fount and
origin of this division of father and daughter, though Willoughby in
the drawingroom last night stands accusably the agent."
"Favour me, sir, with an explanation," said Vernon, seeking to gather
it from Clara.
Dr Middleton threw the explanation upon Willoughby.
Clara, communicated as much as she was able in one of those looks of
still depth which say, Think! and without causing a thought to stir,
takes us into the pellucid mind.
Vernon was enlightened before Willoughby had spoken. His mouth shut
rigidly, and there was a springing increase of the luminous wavering of
his eyes. Some star that Clara had watched at night was like them in
the vivid wink and overflow of its light. Yet, as he was perfectly
sedate, none could have suspected his blood to be chasing wild with
laughter, and his frame strung to the utmost to keep it from volleying.
So happy was she in his aspect, that her chief anxiety was to recover
the name of the star whose shining beckons and speaks, and is in the
quick of spirit-fire. It is the sole star which on a night of frost and
strong moonlight preserves an indomitable fervency: that she
remembered, and the picture of a hoar earth and a lean Orion in flooded
heavens, and the star beneath Eastward of him: but the name! the
name!--She heard Willoughby indistinctly.
"Oh, the old story; another effort; you know my wish; a failure, of
course, and no thanks on either side, I suppose I must ask your
excuse.--They neither of them see what's good for them, sir."
"Manifestly, however," said Dr. Middleton, "if one may opine from the
division we have heard of, the father is disposed to back your
nominee."
"I can't say; as far as I am concerned, I made a mess of it." Vernon
withstood the incitement to acquiesce, but he sparkled with his
recognition of the fact.
"You meant well, Willoughby."
"I hope so, Vernon."
"Only you have driven her away."
"We must resign ourselves."
"It won't affect me, for I'm off to-morrow."
"You see, sir, the thanks I get."
"Mr. Whitford," said Dr. Middleton, "You have a tower of strength in
the lady's father."
"Would you have me bring it to bear upon the lady, sir?"
"Wherefore not?"
"To make her marriage a matter of obedience to her father?"
"Ay, my friend, a lusty lover would have her gladly on those terms,
well knowing it to be for the lady's good. What do you say,
Willoughby?"
"Sir! Say? What can I say? Miss Dale has not plighted her faith. Had
she done so, she is a lady who would never dishonour it."
"She is an ideal of constancy, who would keep to it though it had been
broken on the other side," said Vernon, and Clara thrilled.
"I take that, sir, to be a statue of constancy, modelled upon which a
lady of our flesh may be proclaimed as graduating for the condition of
idiocy," said Dr. Middleton.
"But faith is faith, sir."
"But the broken is the broken, sir, whether in porcelain or in human
engagements; and all that one of the two continuing faithful, I should
rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to
the picking up of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued,
for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of an appointed
asylum."
"You destroy the poetry of sentiment, Dr. Middleton."
"To invigorate the poetry of nature, Mr. Whitford."
"Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the
engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely free?"
"I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the
sentimental world; and since you have chosen to defend it, I will
appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world
of good sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within
a month of a jilting?" Clara slipped her arm under her father's.
"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite enough to
pretend to understand or care for."
Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a
reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her arm
grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.
He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed
him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the Powers above,
he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his
feelings had rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he
would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out with her, relying on
Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle
with Clara promised no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the
lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured his
intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot,
on the faith of his delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions
which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she
might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not
in the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him, and
he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if
a foolish and ill-fated woman.
Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by a
sententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and vanquish
Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared before
Vernon's vexatious arrival.
"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a
very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd
in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go
inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her
father's arm.
"More?" said he.
"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara,
you will see with different eyes."
"Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford."
Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I must
consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to the world. I
have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the
afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You
will have no clear brain so long as that stuff is on the mind. I could
venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for
the prompter expedition of the affair."
Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:
"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you
have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything that one
man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of
her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best
efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition for me."
"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention
of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in him an advocate
who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is
tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a
lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to
yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our
interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being
notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of his
elders."
"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading
on my behalf with Miss Dale," said Vernon. Willoughby strode and
muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not
malicious: and it is the peril of this worship that the object will
wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer subservient.
"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would
not be defrauded of rolling his billow.
"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous
of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my judgement, the lady's
esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure
dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of
the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in her sanctum on the
occasion of your recent visit."
"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to
frenzy, "should I have been bound to marry?" Matter for cogitation was
offered to Dr. Middleton.
"The proposal was without your sanction?"
"Entirely."
"You admire the lady?"
"Respectfully."
"You do not incline to the state?"
"An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination."
"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you
talk?" cried Willoughby.
"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted . . ." Dr. Middleton said, and
was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, "Oblige me, sir.--Oblige me, my
good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting
hand to Clara.
"Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!" she exclaimed.
Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He
doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara had
seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the
great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in festival trim.
She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a
frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.
Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not
credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?"
"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa," Clara
whispered in return.
Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam
upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe? You
have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really?" The confounded gentleman heaved
on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.
He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.
His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said,
"So!" the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back
further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to speak low.
She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped
her voice,--
"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full
of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly
has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an
untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for
everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love:--sound sense! Men are
so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such
positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment:
the rarest of all combinations in men."
"Where have you? . . ." Willoughby contrived to say.
"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood
will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be
rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not
doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of
mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess
my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal
attachment, I thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were
the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You
tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your
final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very:
she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her like a
flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will
shine under her reign; you have my warrant for that. And so will you.
Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have been
under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one
supposed you could stoop. Lady Busshe would have it was a screen, and
she was deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the women
will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in prophecy;
and she will soon be too glad to swell the host. There, my friend, your
sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I could not contain
myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now I must go and be talked
to by Dr. Middleton. How does he take it? They leave?"
"He is perfectly well," said Willoughby, aloud, quite distraught.
She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an
extreme in low-toned converse, though they stood sufficiently isolated
from the others. These had by this time been joined by Colonel De
Craye, and were all chatting in a group--of himself, Willoughby
horribly suspected.
Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and vowed it
again: not to Horace de Craye! She was gone, lost, sunk into the world
of waters of rival men, and he determined that his whole force should
be used to keep her from that man, the false friend who had supplanted
him in her shallow heart, and might, if he succeeded, boast of having
done it by simply appearing on the scene.
Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to Dr
Middleton. "My dear lady! spare me a minute."
De Craye sauntered up, with a face of the friendliest humour:
"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a
kaleidoscope."
"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to find
yet another in the demon secret, and he draw Dr. Middleton two or three
steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from prosecuting the
subject with Clara.
"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her
reasons--a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor
considering within himself under the arch of his lofty frown of
stupefaction.
De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on the
bend of his head before Clara, signifying his absolute devotion to her
service, and this present good fruit for witness of his merits.
She smiled sweetly though vaguely. There was no concealment of their
intimacy.
"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had walked
some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart, adding: "You may expect to see Mr.
Dale here. He knows."
Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast with
her softness, and he proceeded to the house. De Craye waited for a word
or a promising look. He was patient, being self-assured, and passed on.
Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden
brightness: "Sirius, papa!" He repeated it in the profoundest manner:
"Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine scintilla of sense in
that?"
"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa."
"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in
Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you have
not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."
"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?"
Dr Middleton humphed.
"Verily the dog-star rages in many heads," he responded.