"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."