impatiently. "I've had enough of it."

Clarence flashed, but recovered himself.

"Then you overheard what I said, and know what I think," he said calmly.

"I knew it BEFORE," said the young girl, with a slight supercilious toss
of the head, and yet a certain abstraction of manner as she went to the
window and closed it. "Anybody could see it! I know you always wanted
me to stay here with Mrs. Peyton, and be coddled and monitored and
catechised and shut up away from any one, until YOU had been coddled and
monitored and catechised by somebody else sufficiently to suit her
ideas of your being a fit husband for me. I told aunty it was no use our
coming here to--to"--

"To do what?" asked Clarence.

"To put some spirit into you," said the young girl, turning upon him
sharply; "to keep you from being tied to that woman's apron-strings. To
keep her from making a slave of you as she would of me. But it is of
no use. Mary Rogers was right when she said you had no wish to please
anybody but Mrs. Peyton, and no eyes for anybody but her. And if it
hadn't been too ridiculous, considering her age and yours, she'd say you
were dead in love with her."

For an instant Clarence felt the blood rush to his face and then sink
away, leaving him pale and cold. The room, which had seemed to
whirl around him, and then fade away, returned with appalling
distinctness,--the distinctness of memory,--and a vision of the first
day that he had seen Mrs. Peyton sitting there, as he seemed to see her
now. For the first time there flashed upon him the conviction that the
young girl had spoken the truth, and had brusquely brushed the veil from
his foolish eyes. He WAS in love with Mrs. Peyton! That was what his
doubts and hesitation regarding Susy meant. That alone was the source,
secret, and limit of his vague ambition.

But with the conviction came a singular calm. In the last few moments
he seemed to have grown older, to have loosed the bonds of old
companionship with Susy, and the later impression she had given him of
her mature knowledge, and moved on far beyond her years and experience.
And it was with an authority that was half paternal, and in a voice he
himself scarcely recognized, that he said:--

"If I did not know you were prejudiced by a foolish and indiscreet
woman, I should believe that you were trying to insult me as you have
your adopted mother, and would save you the pain of doing both in HER
house by leaving it now and foreve