“I don’t pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank’s for you,” he said.  “The subject doesn’t interest me.  But I do pretend to state two plain truths.  It is one plain truth that you can’t be married till you have money enough to pay for the roof that shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat.  It is another plain truth that you can’t find the money; that I can’t find the money; and that Frank’s only chance of finding it, is going to China.  If I tell him to go, he’ll sit in a corner and cry.  If I insist, he’ll say Yes, and deceive me.  If I go a step further, and see him on board ship with my own eyes, he’ll slip off in the pilot’s boat, and sneak back secretly to you.  That’s his disposition.”

“No!” said Magdalen.  “It’s not his disposition; it’s his love for Me.”

“Call it what you like,” retorted Mr. Clare.  “Sneak or Sweetheart —­he’s too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him.  My shutting the door won’t keep him from coming back.  Your shutting the door will.  Have you the courage to shut it?  Are you fond enough of him not to stand in his light?”

“Fond!  I would die for him!”

“Will you send him to China?”

She sighed bitterly.

“Have a little pity for me,” she said.  “I have lost my father; I have lost my mother; I have lost my fortune—­and now I am to lose Frank.  You don’t like women, I know; but try to help me with a little pity.  I don’t say it’s not for his own interests to send him to China; I only say it’s hard—­very, very hard on me.”

Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her caresses, blind to her tears; but under the tough integument of his philosophy he had a heart—­and it answered that hopeless appeal; it felt those touching words.

“I don’t deny that your case is a hard one,” he said.  “I don’t want to make it harder.  I only ask you to do in Frank’s interests what Frank is too weak to do for himself.  It’s no fault of yours; it’s no fault of mine—­but it’s not the less true that the fortune you were to have brought him has changed owners.”

She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a threatening smile on her lips.

“It may change owners again,” she said.

Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the tones of her voice.  But the words were spoken low; spoken as if to herself—­they failed to reach him across the breadth of the room.  He stopped instantly in his walk and asked what she had said.

“Nothing,” she answered, turning her head away toward the window, and looking out mechanically at the falling rain.  “Only my own thoughts.”

Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject.