Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.

Mrs. Mountstuart set her head nodding on springs.

“Is he clever?”

“Very.”

“He talks well?”

“Yes.”

“Handsome?”

“He might be thought so.”

“Witty?”

“I think he is.”

“Gay, cheerful?”

“In his manner.”

“Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other.  And poor?”

“He is not wealthy.”

Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara’s fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving.  “Of course he’s poor,” she said at last; “directly the reverse of what you could have, it must be.  Well, my fair Middleton, I can’t say you have been dishonest.  I’ll help you as far as I’m able.  How, it is quite impossible to tell.  We’re in the mire.  The best way seems to me to get this pitiable angel to cut some ridiculous capers and present you another view of him.  I don’t believe in his innocence.  He knew you to be a plighted woman.”

“He has not once by word or sign hinted a disloyalty.”

“Then how do you know.”

“I do not know.”

“He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?”

“No.”

“Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing.  What is?”

“Ah! madam!”

“You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature is in existence?”

Clara shook her head:  she could not say she was dizzy.  She had spoken out more than she had ever spoken to herself, and in doing so she had cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.

“I won’t detain you any longer,” said Mrs. Mountstuart.  “The more we learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we were.  I have to go to school to Lady Busshe!  I really took you for a very clever girl.  If you change again, you will notify the important circumstance to me, I trust.”

“I will,” said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility of her changing again would have had such an effect on her hearer.

Mrs. Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with her later impressions.

“I am to do as I please with the knowledge I have gained?”

“I am utterly in your hands, madam.”

“I have not meant to be unkind.”

“You have not been unkind; I could embrace you.”

“I am rather too shattered, and kissing won’t put me together.  I laughed at Lady Busshe!  No wonder you went off like a rocket with a disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor Sir Willoughby and he could not give you up.  I noticed that.  A woman like Lady Busshe, always prying for the lamentable, would have required no further enlightenment.  Has he a temper?”