“Then write him his permit.”

There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his post that he could be, during which Laetitia distressfully scribbled a line for Dr. Corney to deliver to him.  Clara stood near.  She had rebuked herself for want of reserve in the presence of Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly excessive containment when she next addressed Laetitia.  It was, like Laetitia’s look at Dr. Middleton, opportune:  enough to make a man who watched as Willoughby did a fatalist for life:  the shadow of a difference in her bearing toward Laetitia sufficed to impute acting either to her present coolness or her previous warmth.  Better still, when Dr. Middleton said:  “So we leave to-morrow, my dear, and I hope you have written to the Darletons,” Clara flushed and beamed, and repressed her animation on a sudden, with one grave look, that might be thought regretful, to where Willoughby stood.

Chance works for us when we are good captains.

Willoughby’s pride was high, though he knew himself to be keeping it up like a fearfully dexterous juggler, and for an empty reward:  but he was in the toils of the world.

“Have you written?  The post-bag leaves in half an hour,” he addressed her.

“We are expected, but I will write,” she replied:  and her not having yet written counted in his favour.

She went to write the letter.  Dr. Corney had departed on his mission to fetch Crossjay and medicine.  Lady Busshe was impatient to be gone.  “Corney,” she said to Lady Culmer, “is a deadly gossip.”

“Inveterate,” was the answer.

“My poor horses!”

“Not the young pair of bays?”

“Luckily they are, my dear.  And don’t let me hear of dining to-night!”

Sir Willoughby was leading out Mr. Dale to a quiet room, contiguous to the invalid gentleman’s bedchamber.  He resigned him to Laetitia in the hall, that he might have the pleasure of conducting the ladies to their carriage.

“As little agitation as possible.  Corney will soon be back,” he said, bitterly admiring the graceful subservience of Laetitia’s figure to her father’s weight on her arm.

He had won a desperate battle, but what had he won?

What had the world given him in return for his efforts to gain it?  Just a shirt, it might be said:  simple scanty clothing, no warmth.  Lady Busshe was unbearable; she gabbled; she was ill-bred, permitted herself to speak of Dr. Middleton as ineligible, no loss to the county.  And Mrs. Mountstuart was hardly much above her, with her inevitable stroke of caricature:—­“You see Doctor Middleton’s pulpit scampering after him with legs!” Perhaps the Rev. Doctor did punish the world for his having forsaken his pulpit, and might be conceived as haunted by it at his heels, but Willoughby was in the mood to abhor comic images; he hated the perpetrators of them and the grinners.  Contempt of this laughing