“Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you think.  John must not hear of it.  I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!”

“My Diary” was written in the round hand of Clare’s childhood on the first page.  The first name his eye encountered was his own.

“Richard’s fourteenth birthday.  I have worked him a purse and put it under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money.  He does not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but Richard is not, and never will be.”

The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish prayer to God for him set down.  Step by step he saw her growing mind in his history.  As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.

“We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted each other, and I told him he used to call them ‘coals-sleeps’ when he was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to be told he was ever a baby.”

He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek affection.  Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress and pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes!  Upstairs she was lying dead.  He read on: 

“Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure there is not, not in the whole world.  He says he is going to be a great General and going to the wars.  If he does I shall dress myself as a boy and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded.  Oh I pray he will never, never be wounded.  I wonder what I should feel if Richard was ever to die.”

Upstairs Clare was lying dead.

“Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me.  Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does.  He is angry with me because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I know I am not looking after earthworms.”

Yes.  He had told her that.  A shiver seized him at the recollection.

Then it came to a period when the words:  “Richard kissed me,” stood by themselves, and marked a day in her life.

Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry.  He read one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that ambition.

       “Thy truth to me is truer
        Than horse, or dog, or blade;
        Thy vows to me are fewer
        Than ever maiden made.

        Thou steppest from thy splendour
        To make my life a song: 
        My bosom shall be tender
        As thine has risen strong.”

All the verses were transcribed.  “It is he who is the humble knight,” Clare explained at the close, “and his lady, is a Queen.  Any Queen would throw her crown away for him.”

It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.