‘Mr Musselboro will be here directly,’ said Mrs Van Siever, as she was starting for Mrs Broughton’s house.  ’You had better tell him to come to me up here; or, stop—­perhaps you had better keep him here till I come back.  Tell him to be sure and wait for me.’

‘Very well, mamma.  I suppose he can wait below?’

‘Why should he wait below?,’ said Mrs Van Siever, very angrily.

Clara had made the uncourteous proposition to her mother with the express intention of making it understood that she would have nothing to say to him.  ‘He can come upstairs if he likes,’ said Clara; ’and I will go up to my room.’

’If you fight shy of him, miss, you may remember this—­that you will fight shy of me at the same time.’

’I am sorry for that, mamma, for I shall certainly fight shy of Mr Musselboro.’

’You can do as you please.  I can’t force you, and I shan’t try.  But I can make your life a burden to you—­and I will.  What’s the matter with the man that he isn’t good enough for you?  He’s as good as any of your own people ever was.  I hate your new-fangled airs—­with pictures painted on the sly, and all the rest of it.  I hate such ways.  See what they have brought that wretched man to, and the poor fool his wife.  If you go and marry that painter, some of these days you’ll be very much like what she is.  Only I doubt whether he has got the courage enough to blow his brains out.’  With these comfortable words, the old woman took herself off, leaving Clara to entertain her lover as best she might choose.

Mr Musselboro was not long in coming, and, in accordance with Mrs Van Siever’s implied directions to her daughter, was shown up into the drawing-room.  Clara gave him her mother’s message in a very few words.  ’I was expressly told, sir, to ask you to stop, if it is not inconvenient, as she very much wants to see you.’  Mr Musselboro declared that of course he would stop.  He was only too happy to have the opportunity of remaining in such delightful society.  As Clara answered nothing to this, he went on to say that he hoped that the melancholy occasion of Mrs Van Siever’s visit to Mrs Broughton might make a long absence necessary—­he did not, indeed, care how long it might be.  He had recovered now from that paleness, and that want of gloves and jewellery which had befallen him on the previous day immediately after the sight he had seen in the City.  Clara made no answer to the last speech, but, putting some things together in her work-basket, prepared to leave the room.  ‘I hope you are not going to leave me?’ he said, in a voice that was intended to convey much of love, and something of melancholy.

’I am so shocked by what has happened, Mr Musselboro, that I am altogether unfit for conversation.  I was with poor Mrs Broughton last night, and I shall return to her when mamma comes home.’

’It is sad, certainly; but what was there to be expected?  If you’d only seen how he used to go on.’  To this Clara made no answer.  ’Don’t go yet,’ said he; ’there is something that I want to say to you.  There is, indeed.’