“Why do you tremble and blush so?”

Clara looked at her as clearly as she could.  She bowed her head.  “It makes my conduct worse!”

She received a tenderer kiss for that.  It was her avowal, and it was understood:  to know that she had loved or had been ready to love him, shadowed her in the retrospect.

“Ah! you read me through and through,” said Clara, sliding to her for a whole embrace.

“Then there never was cause for him to fear?” Laetitia whispered.

Clara slid her head more out of sight.  “Not that my heart . . .  But I said I have seen it; and it is unworthy of him.  And if, as I think now, I could have been so rash, so weak, wicked, unpardonable—­such thoughts were in me!—­then to hear him speak would make it necessary for me to uncover myself and tell him—­incredible to you, yes!—­that while . . . yes, Laetitia, all this is true:  and thinking of him as the noblest of men, I could have welcomed any help to cut my knot.  So there,” said Clara, issuing from her nest with winking eyelids, “you see the pain I mentioned.”

“Why did you not explain it to me at once?”

“Dearest, I wanted a century to pass.”

“And you feel that it has passed?”

“Yes; in Purgatory—­with an angel by me.  My report of the place will be favourable.  Good angel, I have yet to say something.”

“Say it, and expiate.”

“I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially to-day . . . properly I ought not to have had any idea:  but his coming to me, and his not doing as another would have done, seemed . . .  A gentleman of real nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him by.  I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did tell me more:  if a nature like mine could only have had faith without bearing the rattle of a tongue.”

A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks.  Laetitia rose as Vernon entered.

“I am just going to my father for a few minutes,” she said.

“And I have just come from yours.”  Vernon said to Clara.  She observed a very threatening expression in him.  The sprite of contrariety mounted to her brain to indemnify her for her recent self-abasement.  Seeing the bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said:  “And of course papa has gone to bed”; implying, “otherwise . . .”

“Yes, he has gone.  He wished me well.”

“His formula of good-night would embrace that wish.”

“And failing, it will be good-night for good to me!”

Clara’s breathing gave a little leap.  “We leave early tomorrow.”

“I know.  I have an appointment at Bregenz for June.”

“So soon?  With papa?”

“And from there we break into Tyrol, and round away to the right, Southward.”

“To the Italian Alps!  And was it assumed that I should be of this expedition?”

“Your father speaks dubiously.”

“You have spoken of me, then?”