And then the frightful worry there would be with his father about money,
and so on... And the telling of Clara, and of everybody. No! He
simply could not imagine himself married, or about to be married.
Marriage might happen to other young men, but not to him. His case was
special, somehow... He shrank from such formidable enterprises. The
mere notion of them made him tremble.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

He brushed all that away impatiently, pettishly. The intense and
terrible longing for her arrival persisted. It was now twenty-five to
three. His father would be down soon from his after-dinner nap.
Suddenly the door opened, and he saw the Orgreaves' servant, with a
cloak over her white apron, and hands red with cold. And also he saw
disaster like a ghostly figure following her. His heart sickeningly
sank. Martha smiled and gave him a note, which he smilingly accepted.
"Miss Lessways asked me to come down with this," she said
confidentially. She was a little breathless, and she had absolutely the
manner of a singing chambermaid in light opera. He opened the note,
which said: "Dear Mr Clayhanger, so sorry I can't come to-day.--Yours,
H.L." Nothing else. It was scrawled. "It's all right, thanks," he
said, with an even brighter smile to the messenger, who nodded and
departed.

It all occurred in an instant.

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THREE.

A catastrophe! He suffered then as he had never suffered.

His was no state approaching agony; it was agony itself, black and
awful. She was not coming. She had not troubled herself to give a
reason, nor to offer an excuse. She merely was not coming. She had
showed no consideration for his feelings. It had not happened to her to
reflect that she would be causing him disappointment. Disappointment
was too mild a word. He had been building a marvellously beautiful
castle, and with a thoughtless, careless stroke of the pen she had
annihilated all his labour; she had almost annihilated him. Surely she
owed him some reason, some explanation! Had she the right to play fast
and loose with him like that? "What a shame!" he sobbed violently in
his heart, with an excessive and righteous resentment. He was innocent;
he was blameless; and she tortured him thus! He supposed that all women
were like her... "What a shame!" He pitied himself for a victim. And