such a line as she herself pursued she indicated to him on a neighbouring parallel.  The passion in her was like a place of waves evaporated to a crust of salt.  Clara’s resemblance to Constantia in this instance was ominous.  For him whose tragic privilege it had been to fold each of them in his arms, and weigh on their eyelids, and see the dissolving mist-deeps in their eyes, it was horrible.  Once more the comparison overcame him.  Constantia he could condemn for revealing too much to his manly sight:  she had met him almost half-way:  well, that was complimentary and sanguine:  but her frankness was a baldness often rendering it doubtful which of the two, lady or gentleman, was the object of the chase—­an extreme perplexity to his manly soul.  Now Clara’s inner spirit was shyer, shy as a doe down those rose-tinged abysses; she allured both the lover and the hunter; forests of heavenliness were in her flitting eyes.  Here the difference of these fair women made his present fate an intolerable anguish.  For if Constantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had rendered unhappy, triumphed over, as it is queerly called, Clara was not.  Her individuality as a woman was a thing he had to bow to.  It was impossible to roll her up in the sex and bestow a kick on the travelling bundle.  Hence he loved her, though she hurt him.  Hence his wretchedness, and but for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the Self he loved likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject.

As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly to put his trust in a man.  That fatal conjunction of temper and policy had utterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the fellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara.  But he had wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to retain her at the Hall:—­partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect:  vile delusion!  In truth he should have given festivities, he should have been the sun of a circle, and have revealed himself to her in his more dazzling form.  He went near to calling himself foolish after the tremendous reverberation of “Fooled!” had ceased to shake him.

How behave?  It slapped the poor gentleman’s pride in the face to ask.  A private talk with her would rouse her to renew her supplications.  He saw them flickering behind the girl’s transparent calmness.  That calmness really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them:  something as much he guessed; and he was not sure either of his temper or his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request.

An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with him jocularly on the childish whim of a young lady, moved perhaps by some whiff of jealousy, to shun the yoke, was checked.  He had always taken so superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a moment:  on such a subject too!  Besides, Vernon was one of your men who entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never conquered