The view from the windows looked over the
flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected at its outward
extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane beyond by a
wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation, the attention of
the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate, by the sharp sound of
the iron latch falling in its socket. Some one had entered the shrubbery
from the lane; and Magdalen at once placed herself at the window to
catch the first sight of the visitor through the trees.

After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at the
point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk which led
to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively, without appearing, at
first, to know who he was. As he came nearer, however, she started in
astonishment; and, turning quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed
the gentleman in the garden to be no other than "Mr. Francis Clare."

The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone's oldest
associate and nearest neighbor.

Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage, situated
just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit of the
Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a family of
great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that he had derived
from his ancestors was the possession of a magnificent library, which
not only filled all the rooms in his modest little dwelling, but lined
the staircases and passages as well. Mr. Clare's books represented the
one important interest of Mr. Clare's life. He had been a widower for
many years past, and made no secret of his philosophical resignation to
the loss of his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons
in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened
the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books. When the boys
went to school, Mr. Clare said "good-by" to them--and "thank God"
to himself. As for his small income, and his still smaller domestic
establishment, he looked at them both from the same satirically
indifferent point of view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree.
He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old
woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to
venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's
end to the other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen
philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire.