istendom. She
would fill in the outlines he had sketched to her of a picture that he
had small pride in by comparison with his early vision of a
fortune-favoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's,
intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions. Not like your model
gentleman, that has to be expounded--a thing for abstract esteem!
However, it was the choice left to him. And an alternative was enfolded
in that. Mrs. Mountstuart's model gentleman could marry either one of
two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was
bound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selected
would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him
from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern",
and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infant
Willoughby--his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not
thought of so much as passionately felt for)--would not be scoffed at
as the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original conception
of his name of fame abroad! But Willoughby had the high consolation of
knowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devils
to comfort us, if we are driven hard. "For one of your pangs another
bosom is racked by ten", we read in the solacing Book.

With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood above
himself, contemplating his active machinery, which he could partly
criticize but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims and
schemes and tremours of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in the
world's eyes: and had he not loved himself most heartily he would have
been divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited half
of his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insects
perpetually erecting and repairing a structure of extraordinary
pettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division for
more than a minute or so. But having seen it, and for the first time,
as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharged
with bitterness, atrabiliar.

A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showed
Clara, cunning creature that she was, airily executing her malicious
graces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mountstuart.

CHAPTER XXXV

MISS MIDDLETON AND MRS. MOUNTSTUART

"Sit beside me, fair Middleton," said the great lady.

"Gladly," said Clara, bowing to her title.

"I want to soun