He requested her to wear the Patterne pearls for a dinner-party of grand ladies, telling her that he would commission Miss Isabel to take them to her.  Clara begged leave to decline them, on the plea of having no right to wear them.  He laughed at her modish modesty.  “But really it might almost be classed with affectation,” said he.  “I give you the right.  Virtually you are my wife.”

“No.”

“Before heaven?”

“No.  We are not married.”

“As my betrothed, will you wear them, to please me?”

“I would rather not.  I cannot wear borrowed jewels.  These I cannot wear.  Forgive me, I cannot.  And, Willoughby,” she said, scorning herself for want of fortitude in not keeping to the simply blunt provocative refusal, “does one not look like a victim decked for the sacrifice?—­the garlanded heifer you see on Greek vases, in that array of jewellery?”

“My dear Clara!” exclaimed the astonished lover, “how can you term them borrowed, when they are the Patterne jewels, our family heirloom pearls, unmatched, I venture to affirm, decidedly in my county and many others, and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in the natural course of things?”

“They are yours, they are not mine.”

“Prospectively they are yours.”

“It would be to anticipate the fact to wear them.”

“With my consent, my approval? at my request?”

“I am not yet . . .  I never may be . . .”

“My wife?” He laughed triumphantly, and silenced her by manly smothering.

Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one, he said.  Perhaps the jewels were safer in their iron box.  He had merely intended a surprise and gratification to her.

Courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly, when his discontinuing to insist on her wearing the jewels, under an appearance of deference of her wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.

She said, however, “I fear we do not often agree, Willoughby.”

“When you are a little older!” was the irritating answer.

“It would then be too late to make the discovery.”

“The discovery, I apprehend, is not imperative, my love.”

“It seems to me that our minds are opposed.”

“I should,” said he, “have been awake to it at a single indication, be sure.”

“But I know,” she pursued, “I have learned that the ideal of conduct for women is to subject their minds to the part of an accompaniment.”

“For women, my love? my wife will be in natural harmony with me.”

“Ah!” She compressed her lips.  The yawn would come.  “I am sleepier here than anywhere.”

“Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the kingdom.  It has the effect of sea-air.”

“But if I am always asleep here?”

“We shall have to make a public exhibition of the Beauty.”

This dash of his liveliness defeated her.