Supposing Clara heard the world’s version first!  Men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he had been jilted.

“My letters to men, you say, my love?”

“Your letters of business.”

“Completely myself in my letters of business?” He stared indeed.

She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking:  “You are able to express yourself to men as your meaning dictates.  In writing to . . . to us it is, I suppose, more difficult.”

“True, my love.  I will not exactly say difficult.  I can acknowledge no difficulty.  Language, I should say, is not fitted to express emotion.  Passion rejects it.”

“For dumb-show and pantomime?”

“No; but the writing of it coldly.”

“Ah, coldly!”

“My letters disappoint you?”

“I have not implied that they do.”

“My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription.  I feel, pen in hand, like the mythological Titan at war with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles.  The simile is a good one.  You must not judge of me by my letters.”

“I do not; I like them,” said Clara.

She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent, resumed, “I prefer the pebble to the mountain; but if you read poetry you would not think human speech incapable of. . .”

“My love, I detest artifice.  Poetry is a profession.”

“Our poets would prove to you . . .”

“As I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet.”

“I have not accused you, Willoughby.”

“No poet, and with no wish to be a poet.  Were I one, my life would supply material, I can assure you, my love.  My conscience is not entirely at rest.  Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least wilfully guilty.  You have heard of a Miss Durham?”

“I have heard—­yes—­of her.”

“She may be happy.  I trust she is.  If she is not, I cannot escape some blame.  An instance of the difference between myself and the world, now.  The world charges it upon her.  I have interceded to exonerate her.”

“That was generous, Willoughby.”

“Stay.  I fear I was the primary offender.  But I, Clara, I, under a sense of honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried my engagement through.”

“What had you done?”

“The story is long, dating from an early day, in the ’downy antiquity of my youth’, as Vernon says.”

“Mr. Whitford says that?”

“One of old Vernon’s odd sayings.  It’s a story of an early fascination.”

“Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour.”

“Family considerations—­the lady’s health among other things; her position in the calculations of relatives—­intervened.  Still there was the fascination.  I have to own it.  Grounds for feminine jealousy.”