“Whenever the great gun goes off I will fall on my face, madam!”

“Something of that sort,” said the dame, smiling, and leaving him to reflect on the egoism of women.  For the sake of her dinner-party he was to be a cipher in attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and De Craye were to be encouraged in sparkling together!  And it happened that he particularly wished to shine.  The admiration of his county made him believe he had a flavour in general society that was not yet distinguished by his bride, and he was to relinquish his opportunity in order to please Mrs. Mountstuart!  Had she been in the pay of his rival, she could not have stipulated for more.

He remembered young Crossjay’s instant quietude, after struggling in his grasp, when Clara laid her hand on the boy:  and from that infinitesimal circumstance he deduced the boy’s perception of a differing between himself and his bride, and a transfer of Crossjay’s allegiance from him to her.  She shone; she had the gift of female beauty; the boy was attracted to it.  That boy must be made to feel his treason.  But the point of the cogitation was, that similarly were Clara to see her affianced shining, as shine he could when lighted up by admirers, there was the probability that the sensation of her littleness would animate her to take aim at him once more.  And then was the time for her chastisement.

A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library satisfied him that she had not been renewing her entreaties to leave Patterne.  No, the miserable coquette had now her pastime, and was content to stay.  Deceit was in the air:  he heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it; but, on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded during the hours of her absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly flattered.  What was it that he had dreaded?  Nothing less than news of her running away.  Indeed a silly fancy, a lover’s fancy! yet it had led him so far as to suspect, after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend and his bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them again.  He had actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric call “Fooled!” one of the stage-cries which are cries of nature! particularly the cry of nature with men who have driven other men to the cry.

Constantia Durham had taught him to believe women capable of explosions of treason at half a minute’s notice.  And strangely, to prove that women are all of a pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity of countenance just before she fled, as Clara yesterday and to-day; no nervousness, no flushes, no twitches of the brows, but smoothness, ease of manner—­an elegant sisterliness, one might almost say:  as if the creature had found a midway and borderline to walk on between cruelty and kindness, and between repulsion and attraction; so that up to the verge of her breath she did forcefully attract, repelling at one foot’s length with her armour of chill serenity.  Not with any disdain, with no passion: