“When does Colonel De Craye arrive?” said Clara.

“Horace?  In two or three days.  You wish him to be on the spot to learn his part, my love?”

She had not flown forward to the thought of Colonel De Craye’s arrival; she knew not why she had mentioned him; but now she flew back, shocked, first into shadowy subterfuge, and then into the criminal’s dock.

“I do not wish him to be here.  I do not know that he has a part to learn.  I have no wish.  Willoughby, did you not say I should come to you and you would listen?—­will you listen?  I am so commonplace that I shall not be understood by you unless you take my words for the very meaning of the words.  I am unworthy.  I am volatile.  I love my liberty.  I want to be free . . .”

“Flitch!” he called.

It sounded necromantic.

“Pardon me, my love,” he said.  “The man you see yonder violates my express injunction that he is not to come on my grounds, and here I find him on the borders of my garden!”

Sir Willoughby waved his hand to the abject figure of a man standing to intercept him.

“Volatile, unworthy, liberty—­my dearest!” he bent to her when the man had appeased him by departing, “you are at liberty within the law, like all good women; I shall control and direct your volatility; and your sense of worthiness must be re-established when we are more intimate; it is timidity.  The sense of unworthiness is a guarantee of worthiness ensuing.  I believe I am in the vein of a sermon!  Whose the fault?  The sight of that man was annoying.  Flitch was a stable-boy, groom, and coachman, like his father before him, at the Hall thirty years; his father died in our service.  Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here; only one day the demon seizes him with the notion of bettering himself he wants his independence, and he presents himself to me with a story of a shop in our county town.—­Flitch! remember, if you go you go for good.—­Oh, he quite comprehended.—­Very well; good-bye, Flitch;—­the man was respectful:  he looked the fool he was very soon to turn out to be.  Since then, within a period of several years, I have had him, against my express injunctions, ten times on my grounds.  It’s curious to calculate.  Of course the shop failed, and Flitch’s independence consists in walking about with his hands in his empty pockets, and looking at the Hall from some elevation near.”

“Is he married?  Has he children?” said Clara.

“Nine; and a wife that cannot cook or sew or wash linen.”

“You could not give him employment?”

“After his having dismissed himself?”

“It might be overlooked.”

“Here he was happy.  He decided to go elsewhere, to be free—­of course, of my yoke.  He quitted my service against my warning.  Flitch, we will say, emigrated with his wife and children, and the ship foundered.  He returns, but his place is filled; he is a ghost here, and I object to ghosts.”