you kissing Mr. Francis Clare in the
summer-house, I had no idea you were engaged in carrying out the
intentions of your parents. I offer no opinion on the subject. I merely
regret my own accidental appearance in the character of an Obstacle to
the course of true-love--which appears to run smooth in summer-houses,
whatever Shakespeare may say to the contrary. Consider me for the
future, if you please, as an Obstacle removed. May you be happy!" Miss
Garth's lips closed on that last sentence like a trap, and Miss Garth's
eyes looked ominously prophetic into the matrimonial future.

If Magdalen's anxieties had not been far too serious to allow her the
customary free use of her tongue, she would have been ready on the
instant with an appropriately satirical answer. As it was, Miss Garth
simply irritated her. "Pooh!" she said--and ran upstairs to her sister's
room.

She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She tried the door,
and it resisted her from the inside. The sullen, unmanageable Norah was
locked in.

Under other circumstances, Magdalen would not have been satisfied with
knocking--she would have called through the door loudly and more loudly,
till the house was disturbed and she had carried her point. But the
doubts and fears of the morning had unnerved her already. She went
downstairs again softly, and took her hat from the stand in the hall.
"He told me to put my hat on," she said to herself, with a meek filial
docility which was totally out of her character.

She went into the garden, on the shrubbery side; and waited there to
catch the first sight of her father on his return. Half an hour passed;
forty minutes passed--and then his voice reached her from among the
distant trees. "Come in to heel!" she heard him call out loudly to the
dog. Her face turned pale. "He's angry with Snap!" she exclaimed to
herself in a whisper. The next minute he appeared in view; walking
rapidly, with his head down and Snap at his heels in disgrace. The
sudden excess of her alarm as she observed those ominous signs
of something wrong rallied her natural energy, and determined her
desperately on knowing the worst. She walked straight forward to meet
her father.

"Your face tells your news," she said faintly. "Mr. Clare has been as
heartless as usual--Mr. Clare has said No?"

Her father turned on her with a sudden severity, so entirely
unparalleled in her experience of him that she started back in downright
terror.

"Ma