’Thank you, Clara!  I always thought it an odd predilection, but no one can now esteem Fitzjocelyn more highly than ahe does.’

’Very likely; but if she thinks Louis can stand Mary’s deserting him—­’

‘It will be great pain, no doubt; but once over, he will be free.’

‘It never will be over.’

‘That is young-ladyism.’

’I never was a young lady, and I know what I mean.  Mary may not be all he thinks her, and she may be dull enough to let her affection wear out; but I do not believe he will ever look at any one again, as he did after Mary on your wedding-day.’

‘So you forbid him to be ever happy again!’

’Not at all, only in that one way.  There are many others of being happy.’

‘That one way meaning marriage.’

’I mean that sort of perfect marriage that, according to the saying, is made in heaven.  Whether that could have been with Mary, I do not know her well enough to guess; but I am convinced that he will always have the same kind of memory of her that a man has of a first love, or first wife.’

’It may have been a mistake to drive him into the attachment, which Isabel thinks has been favoured by absence, leaving scope for imagination; but I cannot give up the hope that his days of happiness are yet to come.’

‘Nor do I give up Mary, yet,’ said Clara.  ’Till she announces her defection I shall not believe it, for it would be common honesty to inform poor Louis, and in that she never was deficient.’

‘It is not a plant that seems to thrive on the Peruvian soil.’

’No; and I am dreadfully afraid for Tom Madison.  There were hints about him in Mr. Ponsonby’s letters, which make me very anxious; and from what my uncle says, it seems that there is such an atmosphere of gambling and trickery about his office, that he thinks it a matter of course that no one should be really true and honest.’

’That would be a terrible affair indeed!  I don’t know for which I should be most concerned, Louis or our poor little Charlotte.  But after all, Clara, we have known too many falsehoods come across the Atlantic, to concern ourselves about anything without good reason.’

So they talked, enjoying the leisure the walk gave them for conversation, and then paying the painful visit, when Clara tried in vain to make it understood by the poor old lady that she was going away, and that James was her brother.  They felt thankful that such decay had been spared their grandmother, and Clara sighed to think that her uncle might be on the brink of a like loss of faculties, and then felt herself more than ever bound to him.