“Captain Clavering!” she said at last, and there was much more of surprise than of welcome in her words as she uttered them.

“Yes, Lady On—­, Julia, that is; I thought I might as well come and call, as I found we weren’t to see you at Clavering when we were all there at Easter.”  When she had been living in his brother’s house as one of the family, he had called her Julia as Hugh had done.  The connection between them had been close, and it had come naturally to him to do so.  He had thought much of this since his present project had been initiated, and had strongly resolved not to lose the advantage of his former familiarity.  He had very nearly broken down at the onset, but, as the reader will have observed, had recovered himself.

“You are very good,” she said; and then, as he had been some time standing with his right hand presented to her, she just touched it with her own.

“There’s nothing I hate so much as stuff and nonsense,” said Archie.  To this remark she simply bowed, remaining awfully quiet.  Captain Clavering felt that her silence was in truth awful.  She had always been good at talking, and he had paused for her to say something; but when she bowed to him in that stiff manner—­“doosed stiff she was; doosed stiff, and impudent, too,” he told Doodles afterward—­he knew that he must go on himself.  “Stuff and nonsense is the mischief, you know.”  Then she bowed again.  “There’s been something the matter with them all down at Clavering since you came home, Julia; but hang me if I can find out what it is!” Still she was silent.  “It ain’t Hermy; that I must say.  Hermy always speaks of you as though there had never been anything wrong.”  This assurance, we may say, must have been flattering to the lady whom he was about to court.

“Hermy was always too good to me,” said Lady Ongar, smiling.

“By George, she always does.  If there’s anything wrong it’s been with Hugh; and, by George, I don’t know what it is he was up to when you first came home.  It wasn’t my doing—­of course you know that.”

“I never thought that anything was your doing, Captain Clavering.”

“I think Hugh had been losing money; I do indeed.  He was like a bear with a sore head just at that time.  There was no living in the house with him.  I daresay Hermy may have told you all about that.”

“Hermione is not by nature so communicative as you are, Captain Clavering.”

“Isn’t she?  I should have thought between sisters—­; but of course that’s no business of mine.”  Again she was silent, awfully silent, and he became aware that he must either get up and go away or carry on the conversation himself.  To do either seemed to be equally difficult, and for a while he sat there almost gasping in his misery.  He was quite aware that as yet he had not made her know that he was there.  He was not there, as he well knew, in his friend Doodles’ sense of the word.  “At any rate there isn’t any good in quarrelling, is there, Julia?” he said at last.  Now that he had asked a question, surely she must speak.