one:  or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret history; and that one no flag to boast of.  Densely ignorant of the sex, his nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be annoying.  He would probably presume on Clara’s inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture:  he was quite equal to a philippic upon woman’s rights.  This man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women.  He was an example of the consequence!

Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men.  Willoughby’s wrath at Clara’s exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his loftiness.  Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the house, from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and young Crossjay, down to Barclay the maid.  His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when plucked from his own web and set in the centre of another’s.  Laetitia looked her share in the mystery.  A burden was on her eyelashes.  How she could have come to any suspicion of the circumstances, he was unable to imagine.  Her intense personal sympathy, it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her—­of the paternal pat-back order of pity.  She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in adoring her.  Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring of Laetitia’s pity of himself by confiding in her.  He checked that impulse also, and more sovereignly.  For him to be pitied by Laetitia seemed an upsetting of the scheme of Providence.  Providence, otherwise the discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the beacon, her the bird:  she was really the last person to whom he could unbosom.  The idea of his being in a position that suggested his doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him.  There appeared to be another Power.  The same which had humiliated him once was menacing him anew.  For it could not be Providence, whose favourite he had ever been.  We must have a couple of Powers to account for discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion.  Benevolence had singled him for uncommon benefits:  malignancy was at work to rob him of them.  And you think well of the world, do you!

Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing the knife at the quick of his pride.  Still, he would have raised her weeping:  he would have stanched her wounds bleeding:  he had an infinite thirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable love.  Or let her commit herself, and be cast off.  Only she must commit herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well.  Contemplating her in the form of a discarded weed, he had a catch of the breath:  she was fair.  He implored his Power that Horace De Craye might not be the man!  Why any man?  An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal disfigurement, a laming, were sufficient.  And then a formal and noble offer on his part to keep to the engagement with the unhappy wreck:  yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted.  His imagination conceived it, and the world’s applause besides.