fted to
a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she looked at De Craye
vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by
his readiness, and thankful for the succour. Her look was cold, wide,
unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look,
however, stood too long for Willoughby's endurance.

Ejaculating "Porcelain!" he uncrossed his legs; a signal for the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel to retire. Vernon bowed to Clara as she was rising.
He had not been once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition
at the good-night. She said it, turning her head to Miss Isabel, who
was condoling once more with Colonel De Craye over the ruins of his
wedding-present, the porcelain vase, which she supposed to have been in
Willoughby's mind when he displayed the signal. Vernon walked off to
his room, dark as one smitten blind: bile tumet jecur: her stroke of
neglect hit him there where a blow sends thick obscuration upon
eyeballs and brain alike.

Clara saw that she was paining him and regretted it when they were
separated. That was her real friend! But he prescribed too hard a task.
Besides, she had done everything he demanded of her, except the
consenting to stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose
dexterity wearied her small stock of patience. She had vainly tried
remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by his host,
she refused to consider how; through wine?--the thought was
repulsive.

Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of it by the contemplation of
her scheme of release. If Lucy Darleton was at home; if Lucy invited
her to come: if she flew to Lucy: oh! then her father would have cause
for anger. He would not remember that but for hateful wine! . . .

What was there in this wine of great age which expelled reasonableness,
fatherliness? He was her dear father: she was his beloved child: yet
something divided them; something closed her father's ears to her: and
could it be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her
dutifulness cried violently no. She bowed, stupefied, to his arguments
for remaining awhile, and rose clear-headed and rebellious with the
reminiscence of the many strong reasons she had urged against them.

The strangeness of men, young and old, the little things (she regarded
a grand wine as a little thing) twisting and changing them, amazed her.
And these are they by whom women are abused for variability! Only the
most imperious reasons