Sir Willoughby’s arm waved Miss Dale off away into outer darkness in the wilderness.

Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs in a frenzy of unuttered revolt from the Egoist.

But she was not engaged in the colloquy to be an advocate of Miss Dale or of common humanity.

“Ah!” she said, simply determining that the subject should not drop.

“And, ah!” he mocked her tenderly.  “True, though!  And who knows better than my Clara that I require youth, health, beauty, and the other undefinable attributes fitting with mine and beseeming the station of the lady called to preside over my household and represent me?  What says my other self? my fairer?  But you are! my love, you are!  Understand my nature rightly, and you . . . "

“I do!  I do!” interposed Clara; “if I did not by this time I should be idiotic.  Let me assure you, I understand it.  Oh! listen to me:  one moment.  Miss Dale regards me as the happiest woman on earth.  Willoughby, if I possessed her good qualities, her heart and mind, no doubt I should be.  It is my wish—­you must hear me, hear me out—­my wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish to make way for her.  She appreciates you:  I do not—­to my shame, I do not.  She worships you:  I do not, I cannot.  You are the rising sun to her.  It has been so for years.  No one can account for love; I daresay not for the impossibility of loving . . . loving where we should; all love bewilders me.  I was not created to understand it.  But she loves you, she has pined.  I believe it has destroyed the health you demand as one item in your list.  But you, Willoughby, can restore that.  Travelling, and . . . and your society, the pleasure of your society would certainly restore it.  You look so handsome together!  She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I cannot idolize.  I see faults:  I see them daily.  They astonish and wound me.  Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all by your wife.  You warned me to beware—­that is, you said, you said something.”

Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to cover her slip of the tongue.

Sir Willoughby struck in:  “And when I say that the entire concatenation is based on an erroneous observation of facts, and an erroneous deduction from that erroneous observation!—?  No, no.  Have confidence in me.  I propose it to you in this instance, purely to save you from deception.  You are cold, my love? you shivered.”

“I am not cold,” said Clara.  “Some one, I suppose, was walking over my grave.”

The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing under the curled ridge.

She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by.

“Your grave!” he exclaimed over her head; “my own girl!”

“Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in ground so far away from the chalk, Willoughby?”

“I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important matters.  My mother had a passion for every description of flower.  I fancy I have some recollection of her scattering the flower you mention over the park.”