“She forced me to go, colonel.  Indeed she did.  What do I care for a bun!  And she was quite safe.  We could hear the people stirring in the post-office, and I met our postman going for his letter-bag.  I didn’t want to go:  bother the bun!—­but you can’t disobey Miss Middleton.  I never want to, and wouldn’t.”

“There we’re of the same mind,” said the colonel, and Crossjay shouted, for the lady whom they exalted was at the door.

“You will be too tired for a ride this morning,” De Craye said to her, descending the stairs.

She swung a bonnet by the ribands.  “I don’t think of riding to-day.”

“Why did you not depute your mission to me?”

“I like to bear my own burdens, as far as I can.”

“Miss Darleton is well?”

“I presume so.”

“Will you try her recollection for me?”

“It will probably be quite as lively as yours was.”

“Shall you see her soon?”

“I hope so.”

Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs, but refrained from giving her a hand that shook.

“We shall have the day together,” he said.

Clara bowed.

At the breakfast-table she faced a clock.

De Craye took out his watch.  “You are five and a half minutes too slow by that clock, Willoughby.”

“The man omitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace.  He will find the hour too late here for him when he does come.”

One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye’s, and Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four minutes in arrear.

She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to ten, after kissing her father.  Willoughby was behind her.  He had been soothed by thinking of his personal advantages over De Craye, and he felt assured that if he could be solitary with his eccentric bride and fold her in himself, he would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been to her not so many days back.  Considering how few days back, his temper was roused, but he controlled it.

They were slightly dissenting as De Craye stepped into the hall.

“A present worth examining,” Willoughby said to her:  “and I do not dwell on the costliness.  Come presently, then.  I am at your disposal all day.  I will drive you in the afternoon to call on Lady Busshe to offer your thanks:  but you must see it first.  It is laid out in the laboratory.”

“There is time before the afternoon,” said Clara.

“Wedding presents?” interposed De Craye.

“A porcelain service from Lady Busshe, Horace.”

“Not in fragments?  Let me have a look at it.  I’m haunted by an idea that porcelain always goes to pieces.  I’ll have a look and take a hint.  We’re in the laboratory, Miss Middleton.”

He put his arm under Willoughby’s.  The resistance to him was momentary:  Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that De Craye being with him was not with Clara; and seeing her giving orders to her maid Barclay, he deferred his claim on her company for some short period.