, never mean trifles, move women, thought she.
Would women do an injury to one they loved for oceans of that--ah, pah!

And women must respect men. They necessarily respect a father. "My
dear, dear father!" Clara said in the solitude of her chamber, musing
on all his goodness, and she endeavoured to reconcile the desperate
sentiments of the position he forced her to sustain, with those of a
venerating daughter. The blow which was to fall on him beat on her
heavily in advance. "I have not one excuse!" she said, glancing at
numbers and a mighty one. But the idea of her father suffering at her
hands cast her down lower than self-justification. She sought to
imagine herself sparing him. It was too fictitious.

The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white room so homely to her
maidenly feelings, whispered peace, only to follow the whisper with
another that went through her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a
suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her
chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent
death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has
us we are numb to dishonour, happily senseless.

Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though she was quivering, and
quivering she awoke to the sound of her name beneath her window. "I
can love still, for I love him," she said, as she luxuriated in young
Crossjay's boy's voice, again envying him his bath in the lake waters,
which seemed to her to have the power to wash away grief and chains.
Then it was that she resolved to let Crossjay see the last of her in
this place. He should be made gleeful by doing her a piece of service;
he should escort her on her walk to the railway station next morning,
thence be sent flying for a long day's truancy, with a little note of
apology on his behalf that she would write for him to deliver to Vernon
at night.

Crossjay came running to her after his breakfast with Mrs Montague, the
housekeeper, to tell her he had called her up.

"You won't to-morrow: I shall be up far ahead of you," said she; and
musing on her father, while Crossjay vowed to be up the first, she
thought it her duty to plunge into another expostulation.

Willoughby had need of Vernon on private affairs. Dr. Middleton betook
himself as usual to the library, after answering "I will ruin you yet,"
to Willoughby's liberal offer to despatch an order to London for any
books he might want.

His fine unruffled air, as