My sisters say they think Sir Willoughby must be selfish. He's awfully proud; and perhaps it was because my father wasn't dressed well enough. But what can we do? We're very poor at home, and lots of us, and all hungry. My father says he isn't paid very well for his services to the Government. He's only a marine."
"He's a hero!" said De Craye.
"He came home very tired, with a cold, and had a doctor. But Sir Willoughby did send him money, and mother wished to send it back, and my father said she was not like a woman--with our big family.
He said he thought Sir Willoughby an extraordinary man."
"Not at all; very common; indigenous," said De Craye. "The art of cutting is one of the branches of a polite education in this country, and you'll have to learn it, if you expect to be looked on as a gentleman and a Patterne, my boy. I begin to see how it is Miss Middleton takes to you so. Follow her directions. But I hope you did not listen to a private conversation. Miss Middleton would not approve of that."
"Colonel De Craye, how could I help myself? I heard a lot before I knew what it was. There was poetry!"
"Still, Crossjay, if it was important--was it?"
The boy swelled again, and the colonel asked him, "Does Miss Dale know of your having played listener?"
"She!" said Crossjay. "Oh, I couldn't tell her."
He breathed thick; then came a threat of tears. "She wouldn't do anything to hurt Miss Middleton. I'm sure of that. It wasn't her fault. She--There goes Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay bounded away.
The colonel had no inclination to wait for his return. He walked fast up the road, not perspicuously conscious that his motive was to be well in advance of Vernon Whitford: to whom, after all, the knowledge imparted by Crossjay would be of small advantage. That fellow would probably trot of to Willoughby to row him for breaking his word to Miss Middleton! There are men, thought De Craye, who see nothing, feel nothing.
He crossed a stile into the wood above the lake, where, as he was in the humour to think himself signally lucky, espying her, he took it as a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be posted by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely had the world seen such union of princess and sylph as in that lady's figure. She stood holding by a beech-branch, gazing down on the water.
She had not heard him. When she looked she flushed at the spectacle of one of her thousand thoughts, but she was not startled; the colour overflowed a grave face.
"And 'tis not quite the first time that Willoughby has played this trick!" De Craye said to her, keenly smiling with a parted mouth.
Clara moved her lips to recall remarks introductory to so abrupt and strange a plunge.
He smiled in that peculiar manner of an illuminated comic perception: for the moment he was all falcon; and he surprised himself more than Clara, who was not in the mood to take surprises. It was the sight of her which had animated him to strike his game; he was down on it.
Another instinct at work (they spring up in twenties oftener than in twos when the heart is the hunter) prompted him to directness and quickness, to carry her on the flood of the discovery.
She regained something of her mental self-possession as soon as she was on a level with a meaning she had not yet inspected; but she had to submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to the forked currents of what might be in his mind and what was in hers.
"Miss Middleton, I bear a bit of a likeness to the messenger to the glorious despot--my head is off if I speak not true!
Everything I have is on the die. Did I guess wrong your wish?--I read it in the dark, by the heart. But here's a certainty:
Willoughby sets you free."
"You have come from him?" she could imagine nothing else, and she was unable to preserve a disguise; she trembled.
"From Miss Dale."
"Ah!" Clara drooped. "She told me that once."
"'Tis the fact that tells it now."
"You have not seen him since you left the house?"
"Darkly: clear enough: not unlike the hand of destiny--through a veil. He offered himself to Miss Dale last night, about between the witching hours of twelve and one."
"Miss Dale . . ."
"Would she other? Could she? The poor lady has languished beyond a decade. She's love in the feminine person."
"Are you speaking seriously, Colonel De Craye?"
"Would I dare to trifle with you, Miss Middleton?"
"I have reason to know it cannot be."
"If I have a head, it is a fresh and blooming truth. And more--I stake my vanity on it!"
"Let me go to her." She stepped.
"Consider," said he.
"Miss Dale and I are excellent friends. It would not seem indelicate to her. She has a kind of regard for me, through Crossjay.--Oh, can it be? There must be some delusion. You have seen--you wish to be of service to me; you may too easily be deceived. Last night?--he last night ... ? And this morning!"
"'Tis not the first time our friend has played the trick, Miss Middleton."
"But this is incredible, that last night ... and this morning, in my father's presence, he presses! ... You have seen Miss Dale?
Everything is possible of him: they were together, I know.
Colonel De Craye, I have not the slightest chance of concealment with you. I think I felt that when I first saw you. Will you let me hear why you are so certain?"