CHAPTER III.
LOVER'S QUARREL.
They were sitting together, under the great cedar tree, declared lovers; perhaps not the less happy because some little doubt rested over their future, so far as the young lady was concerned.
As for Hepworth Closs, he had made up his mind to expect difficulties, and knew how to conquer them, if human ingenuity could do it. He loved the bright young creature, and had resolved within himself that no unreasonable opposition on the part of his former friend should prevent him marrying her, while there was a possibility of conciliating his bride, or working upon the love which he had always evinced for his child.
Hepworth had learned, from conversation with both the ladies, that the Lord Hope of the present day was a very different person from the rash, headstrong, audacious young man whom he had almost threatened with disgrace fourteen years back.
Then he was ready to cast wealth, rank, conscience, everything, aside for the gratification of any wild passion that beset him. Now he held the rank to which he was born sacred above all things; was careful, if not covetous, of wealth, because it added power to rank; and was known the whole country round as one of the proudest noblemen and most punctilious magistrates in the three kingdoms.
This man's daughter he—Hepworth Closs—desired to make his wife. Nay, in spite of fate, meant to make his wife, unless she, in her own self, cast his love from her. Having settled upon this, he cast off all care, and gave himself up to the supreme happiness of loving and being beloved.
So, as the two sat under the cedar tree, that bland autumn day, Clara thought, in her wilful little heart, that the man looked too confident and happy. She had no idea of settling down into a commonplace engagement, sanctioned or unsanctioned. What business had he to look so supremely contented? Did he not know that girls sometimes changed their minds?
In short, Lady Clara was in a wilful mood, and could be provoking enough when the fit came on her. Just now she was embroidering diligently. The golden stamens of a superb cactus glowed out stitch by stitch, as her needle flew in and out of its great purplish and crimson leaves.
"Why don't you look up, Clara? I haven't seen your eyes these ten minutes."