’You are only saying what I would not hear from her.  She has been insisting on breaking off, and all my hope was in you.’

’She has?  That is like her!  The only reasonable thing I have heard yet.’

’Then you will not help me?  You, who I thought loved her like your own daughter, and wished for nothing so much!’

’So I might; but that is a different thing from allowing you to wear out your life in a hopeless engagement.  If she cast off her family, nothing could be better, otherwise, I would never connect you with them.’

It did not occur to his lordship that he was straining pretty hard the filial duty of his own son, while he was arguing that Mary should snap asunder the same towards her father.

The fresh discomfiture made poor Louis feel utterly dejected and almost hopeless, but lest silence should seem to consent, he said, ’When you see Mary, you will be willing for me to do anything rather than lose what is so dear and so noble.’

’Yes, I will see Mary.  We will settle it between us, and have it right yet; but we must give her to-day to think it over, and get over the first shock.  When she has had a little time for reflection, a few cool arguments from me will bring her to reason.’

So it was all to be settled over Louis’s passive head; and thus satisfied, his father, who was exceedingly sorry for him, forgot his anger, and offered to go home alone as Clara’s escort, promising to return on the Monday, to bring the full force of his remonstrances to bear down Mary’s scruples.

Lord Ormersfield believed Clara too much of a child to have any ideas on what was passing; and had it depended on him, she must have gone home in an agony of ignorance on the cause of her cousin’s trouble, but Louis came with them to the station, and contrived to say to her while walking up and down the platform, ’Her father is bitter against me.  He has sent for her, and she is going!’

Clara looked mutely in his face, with a sort of inquiring dismay.

‘You’ll hear all about it when my father has told Aunt Kitty,’ said Louis.  ’Clara,’—­he paused, and spoke lower—­’tell her I see what is right now; tell her to—­to pray for me, that I may not be talked into tampering with my conscience or with hers.  Don’t let it dwell on you or on my aunt,’ he added, cheerfully.  ’No, it won’t; you will be thinking of Jem and Isabel.’  And as his father came up, his last words were, in his own bright tone, ’Tell granny from me that giraffes ought always to be seen by gaslight.’

Clara’s countenance returned him a look of sorrowful reproach, for thinking her capable of being amused when he was in distress; and she sat in silent musings all the way home—­pondering over his words, speculating on his future, wondering what Mary felt, and becoming blunt and almost angry, when her grave escort in the opposite corner consulted civility by addressing some indifferent remark to her, as if, she said to herself, ’she were no better than a stuffed giraffe, and knew and cared nothing about anybody!’