By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift the curtain upon Clara.  It was offensive to him, but the injury done to his pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of self-protection.

“Simply desirous to save my guests from annoyance of any kind”, he said.  “Dr Middleton can look ‘Olympus and thunder’, as Vernon calls it.”

“Don’t.  I see him.  That look!  It is Dictionary-bitten!  Angry, homed Dictionary!—­an apparition of Dictionary in the night—­to a dunce!”

“One would undergo a good deal to avoid the sight.”

“What the man must be in a storm!  Speak as you please of yourself:  you are a true and chivalrous knight to dread it for her.  But now, candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management?  Listen to an old friend.  You are too lordly.  No lover can afford to be incomprehensible for half an hour.  Stoop a little.  Sermonizings are not to be thought of.  You can govern unseen.  You are to know that I am one who disbelieves in philosophy in love.  I admire the look of it, I give no credit to the assumption.  I rather like lovers to be out at times:  it makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony.  I perceived she had a spot of wildness.  It’s proper that she should wear it off before marriage.”

“Clara?  The wildness of an infant!” said Willoughby, paternally, musing over an inward shiver.  “You saw her at a distance just now, or you might have heard her laughing.  Horace diverts her excessively.”

“I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night.  She was one of my bright faces.  Her laughter was delicious; rain in the desert!  It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those two were merely a spectacle to me—­points I scored in a lost game.  And I know they were witty.”

“They both have wit; a kind of wit,” Willoughby assented.

“They struck together like a pair of cymbals.”

“Not the highest description of instrument.  However, they amuse me.  I like to hear them when I am in the vein.”

“That vein should be more at command with you, my friend.  You can be perfect, if you like.”

“Under your tuition.”

Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly.  He was easier in his pain for having hoodwinked the lady.  She was the outer world to him; she could tune the world’s voice; prescribe which of the two was to be pitied, himself or Clara; and he did not intend it to be himself, if it came to the worst.  They were far away from that at present, and he continued: 

“Probably a man’s power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl’s.  I detest petty dissensions.  Probably I show it when all is not quite smooth.  Little fits of suspicion vex me.  It is a weakness, not to play them off, I know.  Men have to learn the arts which come to women by nature.  I don’t sympathize with suspicion, from having none myself.”