Some one hailed them.  A sound of the galloping hoof drew her attention to the avenue.  She saw Willoughby dash across the park level, and dropping a word to Vernon, ride away.  Then she allowed herself to be seen.

Crossjay shouted.  Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse’s head.  The boy sprang up to Clara.  He had swum across the lake and back; he had raced Mr. Whitford—­and beaten him!  How he wished Miss Middleton had been able to be one of them!

Clara listened to him enviously.  Her thought was:  We women are nailed to our sex!

She said:  “And you have just been talking to Sir Willoughby.”

Crossjay drew himself up to give an imitation of the baronet’s hand-moving in adieu.

He would not have done that had he not smelled sympathy with the performance.

She declined to smile.  Crossjay repeated it, and laughed.  He made a broader exhibition of it to Vernon approaching:  “I say.  Mr. Whitford, who’s this?”

Vernon doubled to catch him.  Crossjay fled and resumed his magnificent air in the distance.

“Good-morning, Miss Middleton; you are out early,” said Vernon, rather pale and stringy from his cold swim, and rather hard-eyed with the sharp exercise following it.

She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he could speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor of medicine, who would at least present the futile drug.

“Good morning,” she replied.

“Willoughby will not be home till the evening.”

“You could not have had a finer morning for your bath.”

“No.”

“I will walk as fast as you like.”

“I’m perfectly warm.”

“But you prefer fast walking.”

“Out.”

“Ah! yes, that I understand.  The walk back!  Why is Willoughby away to-day?”

“He has business.”

After several steps she said:  “He makes very sure of papa.”

“Not without reason, you will find,” said Vernon.

“Can it be?  I am bewildered.  I had papa’s promise.”

“To leave the Hall for a day or two.”

“It would have been . . .”

“Possibly.  But other heads are at work as well as yours.  If you had been in earnest about it you would have taken your father into your confidence at once.  That was the course I ventured to propose, on the supposition.”

“In earnest!  I cannot imagine that you doubt it.  I wished to spare him.”

“This is a case in which he can’t be spared.”

“If I had been bound to any other!  I did not know then who held me a prisoner.  I thought I had only to speak to him sincerely.”

“Not many men would give up their prize for a word, Willoughby the last of any.”

“Prize” rang through her thrillingly from Vernon’s mouth, and soothed her degradation.

She would have liked to protest that she was very little of a prize; a poor prize; not one at all in general estimation; only one to a man reckoning his property; no prize in the true sense.