Her wish to be free of him was his anguish.  In his pain he thought sincerely.  When the pain was easier he muffled himself in the idea of her jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction.  But she had expressed it.  That was the wound he sought to comfort; for the double reason, that he could love her better after punishing her, and that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing her—­the dread abyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at as a giddy edge possibly near, in spite of his arts of self-defence.

“What I shall do to-morrow evening!” he exclaimed.  “I do not care to fling a bottle to Colonel De Craye and Vernon.  I cannot open one for myself.  To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me.  When do you bring me back my bride, sir?”

“My dear Willoughby!” The Rev. Doctor puffed, composed himself, and sipped.  “The expedition is an absurdity.  I am unable to see the aim of it.  She had a headache, vapours.  They are over, and she will show a return of good sense.  I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to be encouraged in girls.  I can put my foot on it.  My arrangements are for staying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitable invitation.  And I stay.”

“I applaud your resolution, sir.  Will you prove firm?”

“I am never false to my engagement, Willoughby.”

“Not under pressure?”

“Under no pressure.”

“Persuasion, I should have said.”

“Certainly not.  The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasion or to pressure.  The latter brings weight to bear on us; the former blows at our want of it.”

“You gratify me, Doctor Middleton, and relieve me.”

“I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby.  But I do remember—­was I wrong?—­informing Clara that you appeared light-hearted in regard to a departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I must confess, to my liking.”

“Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure; but make my pleasure yours, and you remain to crack many a bottle with your son-in-law.”

“Excellently said.  You have a courtly speech, Willoughby.  I can imagine you to conduct a lovers’ quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson to well-bred damsels.  Aha?”

“Spare me the futility of the quarrel.”

“All’s well?”

“Clara,” replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic epigram, “is perfection.”

“I rejoice,” the Rev. Doctor responded; taught thus to understand that the lovers’ quarrel between his daughter and his host was at an end.