On the other hand, supposing her to be there untouched, universally declined by the sniffling, sagacious dog-fiend, a miserable spinster for years, he could conceive notions of his remorse.  A soft remorse may be adopted as an agreeable sensation within view of the wasted penitent whom we have struck a trifle too hard.  Seeing her penitent, he certainly would be willing to surround her with little offices of compromising kindness.  It would depend on her age.  Supposing her still youngish, there might be captivating passages between them, as thus, in a style not unfamiliar: 

“And was it my fault, my poor girl?  Am I to blame, that you have passed a lonely, unloved youth?”

“No, Willoughby!  The irreparable error was mine, the blame is mine, mine only.  I live to repent it.  I do not seek, for I have not deserved, your pardon.  Had I it, I should need my own self-esteem to presume to clasp it to a bosom ever unworthy of you.”

“I may have been impatient, Clara:  we are human!”

“Never be it mine to accuse one on whom I laid so heavy a weight of forbearance!”

“Still, my old love!—­for I am merely quoting history in naming you so—­I cannot have been perfectly blameless.”

“To me you were, and are.”

“Clara!”

“Willoughby!”

“Must I recognize the bitter truth that we two, once nearly one! so nearly one! are eternally separated?”

“I have envisaged it.  My friend—­I may call you friend; you have ever been my friend, my best friend! oh, that eyes had been mine to know the friend I had!—­Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days that were as night to my soul, I have seen the inexorable finger pointing my solitary way through the wilderness from a Paradise forfeited by my most wilful, my wanton, sin.  We have met.  It is more than I have merited.  We part.  In mercy let it be for ever.  Oh, terrible word!  Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to us for our sole riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the passport given by Abnegation unto Woe that prays to quit this probationary sphere.  Willoughby, we part.  It is better so.”

“Clara! one—­one only—­one last—­one holy kiss!”

“If these poor lips, that once were sweet to you . . .”

The kiss, to continue the language of the imaginative composition of his time, favourite readings in which had inspired Sir Willoughby with a colloquy so pathetic, was imprinted.

Ay, she had the kiss, and no mean one.  It was intended to swallow every vestige of dwindling attractiveness out of her, and there was a bit of scandal springing of it in the background that satisfactorily settled her business, and left her ’enshrined in memory, a divine recollection to him,’ as his popular romances would say, and have said for years.

Unhappily, the fancied salute of her lips encircled him with the breathing Clara.  She rushed up from vacancy like a wind summoned to wreck a stately vessel.