nce. If I
could aid him."

"What necessity have you to tell me more than that there is one?"

"Ah, madam, it is different: not as you imagine. You bid me be
scrupulously truthful: I am: I wish you to know the different kind of
feeling it is from what might be suspected from . . . a confession. To
give my hand, is beyond any thought I have ever encouraged. If you had
asked me whether there is one whom I admire--yes, I do. I cannot help
admiring a beautiful and brave self-denying nature. It is one whom you
must pity, and to pity casts you beneath him: for you pity him because
it is his nobleness that has been the enemy of his fortunes. He lives
for others."

Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very
heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.

Mrs. Mountstuart set her head nodding on springs.

"Is he clever?"

"Very."

"He talks well?"

"Yes."

"Handsome?"

"He might be thought so."

"Witty?"

"I think he is."

"Gay, cheerful?"

"In his manner."

"Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other. And poor?"

"He is not wealthy."

Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara's
fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving. "Of course
he's poor," she said at last; "directly the reverse of what you could
have, it must be. Well, my fair Middleton, I can't say you have been
dishonest. I'll help you as far as I'm able. How, it is quite
impossible to tell. We're in the mire. The best way seems to me to get
this pitiable angel to cut some ridiculous capers and present you
another view of him. I don't believe in his innocence. He knew you to
be a plighted woman."

"He has not once by word or sign hinted a disloyalty."

"Then how do you know."

"I do not know."

"He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?"

"No."

"Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing. What is?"

"Ah! madam!"

"You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature
is in existence?"

Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken
out more than she had ever spoken to herself, and in doing so she had
cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.

"I won't detain you any longer," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "The more we
learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we
were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a
very clever girl. If you ch