Sir Willoughby had led the conversation.  Displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him, he turned to Clara and related one of the after-dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of human nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wife chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the physicians assembled in consultation outside the sick-room, imploring them by all he valued, and in tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying:  “She is everything to me, everything; and if she dies I am compelled to run the risks of marrying again; I must marry again; for she has accustomed me so to the little attentions of a wife, that in truth I can’t.  I can’t lose her!  She must be saved!” And the loving husband of any devoted wife wrung his hands.

“Now, there, Clara, there you have the Egoist,” added Sir Willoughby.  “That is the perfect Egoist.  You see what he comes to—­and his wife!  The man was utterly unconscious of giving vent to the grossest selfishness.”

“An Egoist!” said Clara.

“Beware of marrying an Egoist, my dear!” He bowed gallantly; and so blindly fatuous did he appear to her, that she could hardly believe him guilty of uttering the words she had heard from him, and kept her eyes on him vacantly till she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughts directing her gaze.  She looked at Vernon, she looked at her father, and at the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.  None of them saw the man in the word, none noticed the word; yet this word was her medical herb, her illuminating lamp, the key of him (and, alas, but she thought it by feeling her need of one), the advocate pleading in apology for her.  Egoist!  She beheld him—­unfortunate, self-designated man that he was!—­in his good qualities as well as bad under the implacable lamp, and his good were drenched in his first person singular.  His generosity roared of I louder than the rest.  Conceive him at the age of Dr. Corney’s hero:  “Pray, save my wife for me.  I shall positively have to get another if I lose her, and one who may not love me half so well, or understand the peculiarities of my character and appreciate my attitudes.”  He was in his thirty-second year, therefore a young man, strong and healthy, yet his garrulous return to his principal theme, his emphasis on I and me, lent him the seeming of an old man spotted with decaying youth.

“Beware of marrying an Egoist.”

Would he help her to escape?  The idea of the scene ensuing upon her petition for release, and the being dragged round the walls of his egoism, and having her head knocked against the corners, alarmed her with sensations of sickness.

There was the example of Constantia.  But that desperate young lady had been assisted by a gallant, loving gentleman; she had met a Captain Oxford.

Clara brooded on those two until they seemed heroic.  She questioned herself.  Could she . . . ? were one to come?  She shut her eyes in languor, leaning the wrong way of her wishes, yet unable to say No.