But was he administering it?  If he retained a hold on her, he could undoubtedly apply the scourge at leisure; any kind of scourge; he could shun her, look on her frigidly, unbend to her to find a warmer place for sarcasm, pityingly smile, ridicule, pay court elsewhere.  He could do these things if he retained a hold on her; and he could do them well because of the faith he had in his renowned amiability; for in doing them, he could feel that he was other than he seemed, and his own cordial nature was there to comfort him while he bestowed punishment.  Cordial indeed, the chills he endured were flung from the world.  His heart was in that fiction:  half the hearts now beating have a mild form of it to keep them merry:  and the chastisement he desired to inflict was really no more than righteous vengeance for an offended goodness of heart.  Clara figuratively, absolutely perhaps, on her knees, he would raise her and forgive her.  He yearned for the situation.  To let her understand how little she had known him!  It would be worth the pain she had dealt, to pour forth the stream of re-established confidences, to paint himself to her as he was; as he was in the spirit, not as he was to the world:  though the world had reason to do him honour.

First, however, she would have to be humbled.

Something whispered that his hold on her was lost.

In such a case, every blow he struck would set her flying farther, till the breach between them would be past bridging.

Determination not to let her go was the best finish to this perpetually revolving round which went like the same old wheel-planks of a water mill in his head at a review of the injury he sustained.  He had come to it before, and he came to it again.  There was his vengeance.  It melted him, she was so sweet!  She shone for him like the sunny breeze on water.  Thinking of her caused a catch of his breath.

The dreadful young woman had a keener edge for the senses of men than sovereign beauty.

It would be madness to let her go.

She affected him like an outlook on the great Patterne estate after an absence, when his welcoming flag wept for pride above Patterne Hall!

It would be treason to let her go.

It would be cruelty to her.

He was bound to reflect that she was of tender age, and the foolishness of the wretch was excusable to extreme youth.

We toss away a flower that we are tired of smelling and do not wish to carry.  But the rose—­young woman—­is not cast off with impunity.  A fiend in shape of man is always behind us to appropriate her.  He that touches that rejected thing is larcenous.  Willoughby had been sensible of it in the person of Laetitia:  and by all the more that Clara’s charms exceeded the faded creature’s, he felt it now.  Ten thousand Furies thickened about him at a thought of her lying by the road-side without his having crushed all bloom and odour out of her which might tempt even the curiosity of the fiend, man.