"Hush! he is coming. I hear his step on the terrace."
How that dusky face lighted up. That woman trembled all over under the sound of that man's tread. He was coming to her, there in the room, in which they had once been so happy; coming to her, perhaps in anger. That was nothing. Anger itself would be Heaven, compared to the cold politeness that had sometimes almost frozen her to death. She turned to Clara.
"Go, my child. I will see your father alone."
Clara went to her room. Through the window which looked out upon the lawn, she saw Hepworth Closs come out from the shadow of the cedar, and walk swiftly toward the avenue. By the proud lift of his head, and those quick steps, that seemed to spurn the earth he trod upon, she knew that he had parted from her father in anger, and threw up the window.
"Hepworth! Hepworth! Stop! Stop! and tell me where you are going!"
He did not hear her, the storm in his heart was too violent. He had been driven forth from his sister's roof with a cool politeness that was insulting. The commonest courtesies of life had been denied to him, by the man who had once been his friend. He scarcely thought of Clara, then, a sense of burning indignation swept everything else from his mind.
Clara leaned from the window, trembling with sudden apprehension. Was he really going? Had her father treated him with indignity? Was he giving her up without a struggle or a word of farewell?
While she asked herself these questions, Closs disappeared among the trees in the park, and was swallowed up in the black shadows.
"He shall not go!" cried the girl, in wild excitement. "He shall not be driven away by papa, or any one else! Where is my jacket? What has that girl done with my hat? Ah! here, and here!"
She huddled the shawl around her, tossed the little sailor's hat to her head, and, opening the chamber door so swiftly that it made no noise, darted down stairs, and, avoiding the principal entrance, reached the lawn by leaping from one of the drawing-room windows, where she paused a moment to draw breath. But no time was to be lost. At the rate Hepworth was walking, he must now be well on his way to the lodge. The avenue swept away from the house in a grand curve. She knew of a path through the trees which would lead her straight to old Badger's lodge. It was shadowy and lonesome, but what did she care for that? No deer ever bounded down that path more lightly than Clara went. She did not stop to think of propriety, or of her own object. Her heart told her that Hepworth had been driven from the house, perhaps thinking that she would sanction the outrage; for it was an outrage, even if her own father had done it. He should not go away, believing it possible for her to prove so base.