done would cut the cord. Her sensation of languor swept over her.
De Craye took a stride. He was accosted by one of the railway-porters. Flitch's fly was in request for a gentleman. A portly old gentleman bothered about luggage appeared on the landing.
'The gentleman can have it,' said De Craye, handing Flitch his money.
'Open the door.' Clara said to Flitch.
He tugged at the handle with enthusiasm. The door was open: she stepped in.
'Then mount the box and I'll jump up beside you,' De Craye called out, after the passion of regretful astonishment had melted from his features.
Clara directed him to the seat fronting her; he protested indifference to the wet; she kept the door unshut. His temper would have preferred to buffet the angry weather. The invitation was too sweet.
She heard now the bell of her own train. Driving beside the railway embankment she met the train: it was eighteen minutes late, by her watch. And why, when it flung up its whale-spouts of steam, she was not journeying in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will: that she could say. Vernon had not induced her to remain; assuredly her present companion had not; and her whole heart was for flight: yet she was driving back to the Hall, not devoid of calmness. She speculated on the circumstance enough to think herself incomprehensible, and there left it, intent on the scene to come with Willoughby.
'I must choose a better day for London,' she remarked.
De Craye bowed, but did not remove his eyes from her.
'Miss Middleton, you do not trust me.'
She answered: 'Say in what way. It seems to me that I do.'
'I may speak?'
'If it depends on my authority.'
'Fully?'
'Whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate, be not very grave. I want cheering in wet weather.'
'Miss Middleton, Flitch is charioteer once more. Think of it. There's a tide that carries him perpetually to the place where he was cast forth, and a thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the honour to be a friend of long standing: one ventures on one's devotion: it dates from the first moment of my seeing you. Flitch is to blame, if any one. Perhaps the spell would be broken, were he reinstated in his ancient office.'
'Perhaps it would,' said Clara, not with her best of smiles. Willoughby's pride of relentlessness appeared to her to be receiving a blow by rebound, and that seemed high justice.
'I am afraid you were right; the poor fellow has no chance,' De Craye pursued. He paused, as for decorum in the presence of misfortune, and laughed sparklingly: 'Unless I engage him, or pretend to! I verily believe that Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the Hall completes the picture of the Eden within. — Why will you not put some trust in me, Miss Middleton?'
'But why should you not pretend to engage him then, Colonel De Craye?'
'We'll plot it, if you like. Can you trust me for that?'
'For any act of disinterested kindness, I am sure.'
'You mean it?'
'Without reserve. You could talk publicly of taking him to London.'
'Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My arrival changed your mind. You distrust me: and ought I to wonder? The wonder would be all the other way. You have not had the sort of report of me which would persuade you to confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you were going. Do you ask me how? I cannot say. Through what they call sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural sympathy, natural antipathy. People have to live together to discover how deep it is!'
Clara breathed her dumb admission of his truth.
The fly jolted and threatened to lurch.
'Flitch, my dear man!' the colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance; 'for,' said he to Clara, whom his apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling, 'we're not safe with him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking the heart out of me before he has done. — But if two of us have not the misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery, there's hope. That is, if one has courage and the other has wisdom. Otherwise they may go to the yoke in spite of themselves. The great enemy is Pride, who has them both in a coach and drives them to the fatal door, and the only thing to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to spare. And as there's no pride like the pride of possession, the deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride won't be taught wisdom in any other fashion. But one must have the courage to do it!'
De Craye trifled with the window-sash, to give his words time to sink in solution.
Who but Willoughby stood for Pride? And who, swayed by languor, had dreamed of a method that would be surest and swiftest to teach him the wisdom of surrendering her?
'You know, Miss Middleton, I study character,' said the colonel.
'I see that you do,' she answered.
'You intend to return?'
'Oh, decidedly.'
'The day is unfavourable for travelling, I must say.'
'It is.'
'You may count on my discretion in the fullest degree. I throw myself on your generosity when I assure you that it was not my design to surprise a secret. I guessed the station, and went there, to put myself at your disposal.'
'Did you,' said Clara, reddening slightly, 'chance to see Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage pass you when you drove up to the station?'
De Craye had passed a carriage. 'I did not see the lady. She was in it?'
'Yes. And therefore it is better to put discretion on one side: we may be certain she saw you.'
'But not you, Miss Middleton.'
'I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a description of courage, Colonel De Craye, when it is forced on me.'
'I have not suspected the reverse. Courage wants training, as well as other fine capacities. Mine is often rusty and rheumatic.'
'I cannot hear of concealment or plotting.'
'Except, pray, to advance the cause of poor Flitch!'
'He shall be excepted.'
The colonel screwed his head round for a glance at his coachman's back.
'Perfectly guaranteed to-day!' he said of Flitch's look of solidity. 'The convulsion of the elements appears to sober our friend; he is only dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the park-gates.'
Clara leaned forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the Hall strangely renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked her feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a treacherous cunning for imposing it on her free will to decide her fate.
Involuntarily she sighed.
'There is a train at three,' said De Craye, with splendid promptitude.
'Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs. Mountstuart tonight. And I have a passion for solitude! I think I was never intended for obligations. The moment I am bound I begin to brood on freedom.'
'Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton!..'
'What of them?'
'They're feeling too much alone.'
She could not combat the remark: by her self-assurance that she had the principle of faithfulness, she acknowledged to herself the truth of it: — there is no freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She tried to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated her into a sense of pitiful dependence.
Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be traversing in the society of a closely scanning reader of fair faces. Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park.
'Shall I leave you?' said De Craye.
'Why should you?' she replied.
