“Can you, Mrs. Mountstuart, can you think I would be so heartlessly treacherous?”

“Be honest, fair Middleton, and answer me:  Can you say you had not a corner of an idea of producing an effect on Willoughby?”

Clara checked the instinct of her tongue to defend her reddening cheeks, with a sense that she was disintegrating and crumbling, but she wanted this lady for a friend, and she had to submit to the conditions, and be red and silent.

Mrs. Mountstuart examined her leisurely.

“That will do.  Conscience blushes.  One knows it by the conflagration.  Don’t be hard on yourself . . . there you are in the other extreme.  That blush of yours would count with me against any quantity of evidence—­all the Crooklyns in the kingdom.  You lost your purse.”

“I discovered that it was lost this morning.”

“Flitch has been here with it.  Willoughby has it.  You will ask him for it; he will demand payment:  you will be a couple of yards’ length or so of cramoisy:  and there ends the episode, nobody killed, only a poor man melancholy-wounded, and I must offer him my hand to mend him, vowing to prove to him that Suttee was properly abolished.  Well, and now to business.  I said I wanted to sound you.  You have been overdone with porcelain.  Poor Lady Busshe is in despair at your disappointment.  Now, I mean my wedding-present to be to your taste.”

“Madam!”

“Who is the madam you are imploring?”

“Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!”

“Well?”

“I shall fall in your esteem.  Perhaps you will help me.  No one else can.  I am a prisoner:  I am compelled to continue this imposture.  Oh, I shun speaking much:  you object to it and I dislike it:  but I must endeavour to explain to you that I am unworthy of the position you think a proud one.”

“Tut-tut; we are all unworthy, cross our arms, bow our heads; and accept the honours.  Are you playing humble handmaid?  What an old organ-tune that is!  Well?  Give me reasons.”

“I do not wish to marry.”

“He’s the great match of the county!”

“I cannot marry him.”

“Why, you are at the church door with him!  Cannot marry him?”

“It does not bind me.”

“The church door is as binding as the altar to an honourable girl.  What have you been about?  Since I am in for confidences, half ones won’t do.  We must have honourable young women as well as men of honour.  You can’t imagine he is to be thrown over now, at this hour?  What have you against him? come!”

“I have found that I do not . . .”

“What?”

“Love him.”

Mrs. Mountstuart grimaced transiently.  “That is no answer.  The cause!” she said.  “What has he done?”

“Nothing.”

“And when did you discover this nothing?”

“By degrees:  unknown to myself; suddenly.”

“Suddenly and by degrees?  I suppose it’s useless to ask for a head.  But if all this is true, you ought not to be here.”