and his pension:  he was an army doctor.  I may by-and-by have to live in a town for pupils.  I could be grateful to any one who would save me from that.  I should be astonished at his choosing to have me burden his household as well.—­Have I now explained the nature of my pity?  It would be the pity of common sympathy, pure lymph of pity, as nearly disembodied as can be.  Last year’s sheddings from the tree do not form an attractive garland.  Their merit is, that they have not the ambition.  I am like them.  Now, Miss Middleton, I cannot make myself more bare to you.  I hope you see my sincerity.”

“I do see it,” Clara said.

With the second heaving of her heart, she cried:  “See it, and envy you that humility! proud if I could ape it!  Oh, how proud if I could speak so truthfully true!—­You would not have spoken so to me without some good feeling out of which friends are made.  That I am sure of.  To be very truthful to a person, one must have a liking.  So I judge by myself.  Do I presume too much?”

Kindness was on Laetitia’s face.

“But now,” said Clara, swimming on the wave in her bosom, “I tax you with the silliest suspicion ever entertained by one of your rank.  Lady, you have deemed me capable of the meanest of our vices!—­Hold this hand, Laetitia; my friend, will you?  Something is going on in me.”

Laetitia took her hand, and saw and felt that something was going on.

Clara said, “You are a woman.”

It was her effort to account for the something.

She swam for a brilliant instant on tears, and yielded to the overflow.

When they had fallen, she remarked upon her first long breath quite coolly:  “An encouraging picture of a rebel, is it not?”

Her companion murmured to soothe her.

“It’s little, it’s nothing,” said Clara, pained to keep her lips in line.

They walked forward, holding hands, deep-hearted to one another.

“I like this country better now,” the shaken girl resumed.  “I could lie down in it and ask only for sleep.  I should like to think of you here.  How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did!  Our dreams of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality.  I have been lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little . . . loving?  Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed you, and not made this exhibition of myself—­and if you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together—­if that idea of jealousy had not been in your head.  You had it from him.”

“I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect.”

“He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released.  I have noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by their nature.  They are the needles, and he the magnet.  Jealousy of you, Miss Dale!  Laetitia, may I speak?”