Well, the difference was, that De Craye had not the smarting sense of honour with women which our meditator had:  an impartial judiciary, it will be seen:  and he discriminated between himself and the other justly:  but sensation surging to his brain at the same instant, he reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving that difference as clearly, before she betrayed her position to De Craye, which Vernon assumed that she had done.  Of course he did.  She had been guilty of it once:  why, then, in the mind of an offended friend, she would be guilty of it twice.  There was evidence.  Ladies, fatally predestined to appeal to that from which they have to be guarded, must expect severity when they run off their railed highroad:  justice is out of the question:  man’s brains might, his blood cannot administer it to them.  By chilling him to the bone they may get what they cry for.  But that is a method deadening to their point of appeal.

I the evening, Miss Middleton and the colonel sang a duet.  She had of late declined to sing.  Her voice was noticeably firm.  Sir Willoughby said to her, “You have recovered your richness of tone, Clara.”  She smiled and appeared happy in pleasing him.  He named a French ballad.  She went to the music-rack and gave the song unasked.  He should have been satisfied, for she said to him at the finish, “Is that as you like it?” He broke from a murmur to Miss Dale, “Admirable.”  Some one mentioned a Tuscan popular canzone.  She waited for Willoughby’s approval, and took his nod for a mandate.

Traitress! he could have bellowed.

He had read of this characteristic of caressing obedience of the women about to deceive.  He had in his time profited by it.

“Is it intuitively or by their experience that our neighbours across Channel surpass us in the knowledge of your sex?” he said to Miss Dale, and talked through Clara’s apostrophe to the ’Santissinia Virgine Maria,’ still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections.  The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift:  he stabs air, which is to stab himself.  Her complacent proof-armour bids him know himself supplanted.

During the short conversational period before the ladies retired for the night, Miss Eleanor alluded to the wedding by chance.  Miss Isabel replied to her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara.  De Craye foiled it adroitly.  Clara did not utter a syllable.  Her bosom lifted to a wavering height and sank.  Subsequently she looked at De Craye vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked.  She was astonished by his readiness, and thankful for the succour.  Her look was cold, wide, unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it.  The look, however, stood too long for Willoughby’s endurance.