“Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the patience, Willoughby, of a husband!”

Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be visible.  He half yawned:  “I claim no happier title, sir,” and made light of the weariful discussion.

Clara was shaken:  she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or that Colonel De Craye had guessed erroneously.  It was too likely that Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.

There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic amazement of his face at her persistency in speaking of Miss Dale.  She could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the suppositions to be against her.  And unhappily all the Delicacies (a doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides, which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to the last remnant of a protecting sprite.  She could not, as in a dear melodrama, from the aim of a pointed finger denounce him, on the testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed.  She could not even declare that she doubted his truthfulness.  The refuge of a sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood, were denied her now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to ladies of pure breeding.

“One more respite, papa,” she implored him, bitterly conscious of the closer tangle her petition involved, and, if it must be betrayed of her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so woefully Gordian that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the likeness of one of earth, would have to cut it:  her cry within, as she succumbed to weakness, being fervider, “Anything but marry this one!” She was faint with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their imaginative energies hold revel uncontrolled and are projectively desperate.

“No respite!” said Willoughby, genially.

“And I say, no respite!” observed her father.  “You have assumed a position that has not been granted you, Clara Middleton.”

“I cannot bear to offend you, father.”

“Him!  Your duty is not to offend him.  Address your excuses to him.  I refuse to be dragged over the same ground, to reiterate the same command perpetually.”

“If authority is deputed to me, I claim you,” said Willoughby.

“You have not broken faith with me?”

“Assuredly not, or would it be possible for me to press my claim?”