‘And what is to become of my poor Aunt Kitty?’

’She has her Oliver!  She would not have me put Jem out of his birthright.’

‘James will not be put into it.’

She wrenched away her hand, and looked at him with all her brother’s fierceness.  ‘And you!’ she cried, ’why could not you speak up like a man, and tell them that I thank none of them, and will have nothing to say to any of them; and that if this is to belong to any one, it must be to my noble, my glorious, generous brother; and, if he hasn’t it, it may go to the Queen, for what I care!  I’ll never have one stone of it.  Why could you not say so, instead of all that humbug’!’

’I thought the family had afforded quite spectacles enough for one day,’ said Louis; ’and besides, I had some pity upon your grandmother, and on your uncle too.’

’Jem told me grandmamma claimed my first duty; but he never knew of this wicked plan.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Knew that I was to supplant him!’

’Yes; we all knew it was a threat of your uncle; but we spared you the knowledge, thinking that all might yet be accommodated, and never expecting it would come on you in this sudden way.’

‘Then I think I have been unfairly used,’ cried Clara; ’I have been brought here on false pretences.  As if I would have come near the place if I had known it!’

’A very false pretence that your grandmother must not be left alone at eighty, by the child whom she brought up.’

‘Oh, Louis! you want to tear me to pieces!’

‘I have pity on my aunt; I have far more pity on your uncle.’  Clara stared at him.  ’Here is a man who started with a grand heroic purpose to redeem the estate, not for himself, but for her and his brother; he exiles himself, he perseveres, till this one pursuit, for which he denies himself home, kindred, wife or child, absorbs and withers him up.  He returns to find his brother dead; and the children, for whom he sacrificed all, set against him, and rejecting his favours.’

This was quite a new point of view to Clara.  ‘It is his own fault,’ she said.

‘That a misfortune is by our own fault is no comfort,’ said Louis.  ’His apparent neglect, after all, arose from his absorption in the one object.’

‘Yes; but how shameful to wish James to forget his Ordination.’

’A strong way of putting it.  He asked too much:  but he would have been, and may yet be, contented with concessions involving nothing wrong.  His way of life can hardly have taught him to appreciate James’s scruples, as we do; and even if right and wrong were more neatly partitioned between them than I think they are, it would still be hard on him to find this destined heir spurning his benefits.’

’What are you coming to, Louis!  You think James right?

’I would give the world to think so, Clara.  One motive is too high for praise, the other—­No, I will say nothing of it.  But I could wish I had not precipitated matters last year.’