“No, my dear; I don’t remember ever hearing of the house in Kent.  Tell me about it.”

“There is nothing to tell, except this:  the new house was near a fine country-seat standing in its own park.  The owner of the place was a gentleman named Wardour.  He, too, was one of my father’s Kentish friends.  He had an only son.”

She paused, and played nervously with her fan.  Mrs. Crayford looked at her attentively.  Clara’s eyes remained fixed on her fan—­Clara said no more.  “What was the son’s name?” asked Mrs. Crayford, quietly.

“Richard.”

“Am I right, Clara, in suspecting that Mr. Richard Wardour admired you?”

The question produced its intended effect.  The question helped Clara to go on.

“I hardly knew at first,” she said, “whether he admired me or not.  He was very strange in his ways—­headstrong, terribly headstrong and passionate; but generous and affectionate in spite of his faults of temper.  Can you understand such a character?”

“Such characters exist by thousands.  I have my faults of temper.  I begin to like Richard already.  Go on.”

“The days went by, Lucy, and the weeks went by.  We were thrown very much together.  I began, little by little, to have some suspicion of the truth.”

“And Richard helped to confirm your suspicions, of course?”

“No.  He was not—­unhappily for me—­he was not that sort of man.  He never spoke of the feeling with which he regarded me.  It was I who saw it.  I couldn’t help seeing it.  I did all I could to show that I was willing to be a sister to him, and that I could never be anything else.  He did not understand me, or he would not, I can’t say which.”

“‘Would not,’ is the most likely, my dear.  Go on.”

“It might have been as you say.  There was a strange, rough bashfulness about him.  He confused and puzzled me.  He never spoke out.  He seemed to treat me as if our future lives had been provided for while we were children.  What could I do, Lucy?”

“Do?  You could have asked your father to end the difficulty for you.”

“Impossible!  You forget what I have just told you.  My father was suffering at that time under the illness which afterward caused his death.  He was quite unfit to interfere.”

“Was there no one else who could help you?”

“No one.”

“No lady in whom you could confide?”

“I had acquaintances among the ladies in the neighborhood.  I had no friends.”

“What did you do, then?”

“Nothing.  I hesitated; I put off coming to an explanation with him, unfortunately, until it was too late.”

“What do you mean by too late?”

“You shall hear.  I ought to have told you that Richard Wardour is in the navy—­”

“Indeed!  I am more interested in him than ever.  Well?”

“One spring day Richard came to our house to take leave of us before he joined his ship.  I thought he was gone, and I went into the next room.  It was my own sitting-room, and it opened on to the garden.”—­