es
of a repeated ahem. He bethought him of replying in his doctorial
tongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to look
starved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in the inner
cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed him. His brows
joined. He said: "I shall not be ready to-morrow morning."

"In the afternoon?"

"Nor in the afternoon."

"When?"

"My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no other
readiness. Ladies," he bowed to the group in the hall below him, "may
fair dreams pay court to you this night!"

Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of the
ladies, directed Horace De Craye to the laboratory for a smoking-room,
and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of his
temper if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her
disappointment should take place on the morrow, in his absence, he
said: "Good-night, good-night," to her, with due fervour, bending over
her flaccid finger-tips; then offered his arm to the Rev. Doctor.

"Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man to
bear my load," the father of the stupefied girl addressed him.
"Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night, my love.
Clara!"

"Papa!"

"Good-night."

"Oh!" she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame of
the curtained conspiracy and herself, "good night".

Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped down.

"There was an understanding that papa and I should go to London
to-morrow early," she said, unconcernedly, to the ladies, and her voice
was clear, but her face too legible. De Craye was heartily unhappy at
the sight.

CHAPTER XXI

CLARA'S MEDITATIONS

Two were sleepless that night: Miss Middleton and Colonel De Craye.

She was in a fever, lying like stone, with her brain burning. Quick
natures run out to calamity in any little shadow of it flung before.
Terrors of apprehension drive them. They stop not short of the
uttermost when they are on the wings of dread. A frown means tempest, a
wind wreck; to see fire is to be seized by it. When it is the approach
of their loathing that they fear, they are in the tragedy of the
embrace at a breath; and then is the wrestle between themselves and
horror, between themselves and evil, which promises aid; themselves and
weakness, which calls on evil; themselves and the better part of them,
which whispers no beguilement.

The fals