Laetitia was left to think it pleased him to play at cat and mouse.  She had not “hit him to the life”, or she would have marvelled in acknowledging how sincere he was.

At her next sitting by the bedside of Lady Patterne she received a certain measure of insight that might have helped her to fathom him, if only she could have kept her feelings down.

The old lady was affectionately confidential in talking of her one subject, her son.  “And here is another dashing girl, my dear; she has money and health and beauty; and so has he; and it appears a fortunate union; I hope and pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when our eyes grow dim, because we read the plain lines, and I ask myself whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not been the mutual attraction.  We tried it before; and that girl Durham was honest, whatever we may call her.  I should have desired an appreciative thoughtful partner for him, a woman of mind, with another sort of wealth and beauty.  She was honest, she ran away in time; there was a worse thing possible than that.  And now we have the same chapter, and the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and I shall not see the end of it.  Promise me you will always be good to him; be my son’s friend; his Egeria, he names you.  Be what you were to him when that girl broke his heart, and no one, not even his mother, was allowed to see that he suffered anything.  Comfort him in his sensitiveness.  Willoughby has the most entire faith in you.  Were that destroyed—­I shudder!  You are, he says, and he has often said, his image of the constant woman.”

Laetitia’s hearing took in no more.  She repeated to herself for days:  “His image of the constant woman!” Now, when he was a second time forsaking her, his praise of her constancy wore the painful ludicrousness of the look of a whimper on the face.

CHAPTER V

CLARA MIDDLETON

The great meeting of Sir Willoughby Patterne and Miss Middleton had taken place at Cherriton Grange, the seat of a county grandee, where this young lady of eighteen was first seen rising above the horizon.  She had money and health and beauty, the triune of perfect starriness, which makes all men astronomers.  He looked on her, expecting her to look at him.  But as soon as he looked he found that he must be in motion to win a look in return.  He was one of a pack; many were ahead of him, the whole of them were eager.  He had to debate within himself how best to communicate to her that he was Willoughby Patterne, before her gloves were too much soiled to flatter his niceness, for here and there, all around, she was yielding her hand to partners—­obscurant males whose touch leaves a stain.  Far too generally gracious was Her Starriness to please him.  The effect of it, nevertheless, was to hurry him with all his might into the heat of the chase, while yet he knew no more of her than that he was competing for a prize, and Willoughby Patterne was only one of dozens to the young lady.