t roam alone about Clavering Park with any young gentleman
while I am down here; and that he might specially object to my roaming
with you, were he to know that you and I were--old acquaintances. Now I
have been very frank, Mr. Clavering, and I think that that ought to be
enough."

"You are afraid of him already, then?"

"I am afraid of offending any one whom I love, and especially any one to
whom I owe any duty."

"Enough! Indeed it is not. From what you know of me, do you think it
likely that that will be enough?" He was now standing in front of her,
between her and the gate, and she made no effort to leave him.

"And what is it you want? I suppose you do not mean to fight Lord Ongar,
and that if you did you would not come to me."

"Fight him! No; I have no quarrel with him. Fighting him would do no
good."

"None in the least; and he would not fight if you were to ask him; and
you could not ask without being false to me."

"I should have had an example for that, at any rate."

"That's nonsense, Mr. Clavering. My falsehood, if you should choose to
call me false, is of a very different nature, and is pardonable by all
laws known to the world."

"You are a jilt! that is all."

"Come, Harry, don't use hard words."--and she put her hand kindly upon
his arm. "Look at me, such as I am, and at yourself, and then say
whether anything but misery could come of a match between you and me.
Our ages by the register are the same, but I am ten years older than you
by the world. I have two hundred a year, and I owe at this moment six
hundred pounds. You have, perhaps, double as much, and would lose half
of that if you married. You are an usher at school."

"No, madam, I am not an usher at a school."

"Well, well, you know I don't mean to make you angry."

"At the present moment, I am a schoolmaster, and if I remain so, I might
fairly look forward to a liberal income. But I am going to give that
up."

"You will not be more fit for matrimony because you are going to give up
your profession. Now, Lord Ongar has--heaven knows what--perhaps sixty
thousand a year."

"In all my life I never heard such effrontery--such baldfaced, shameless
worldliness!"

"Why should I not love a man with a large income?"

"He is old enough to be your father."

"He is thirty-six, and I am twenty-four."

"Thirty-six!"

"There is the Peerage for you to look at. But, my dear Harry, do you not
know that you are perplexing me and yourself