"Not very," she had answered, smiling. "It is only a little stiff. I can't quite move it easily."

And then she lifted it up, and afterwards dropped it with a little look of pain that ran through his heart.

The next five minutes were taken up in discussing the case of the recusant boiler, and then Clara discovered that she had better go and fetch her mother. But against the immediate taking of this step he had alleged some valid reason, and so they had gone on, till the dark night admonished him that he could do no more than save the dinner hour at Castle Richmond.

The room was nearly dark when he left her, and she got up and stood at the front window, so that, unseen, she might see his figure as he rode off from the house. He mounted his horse within the quadrangle, and coming out at the great old-fashioned ugly portal, galloped off across the green park with a loose rein and a happy heart. What is it the song says?

"Oh, ladies, beware of a gay young knight
Who loves and who rides away."

There was at Clara's heart, as she stood there at the window, some feeling of the expediency of being beware, some shadow of doubt as to the wisdom of what she had done. He rode away gaily, with a happy spirit, for he had won that on the winning of which he had been intent. No necessity for caution presented itself to him. He had seen and loved; had then asked, and had not asked in vain.

She stood gazing after him, as long as her straining eye could catch any outline of his figure as it disappeared through the gloom of the evening. As long as she could see him, or even fancy that she still saw him, she thought only of his excellence; of his high character, his kind heart, his talents—which in her estimation were ranked perhaps above their real value—his tastes, which coincided so well with her own, his quiet yet manly bearing, his useful pursuits, his gait, appearance, and demeanour. All these were of a nature to win the heart of such a girl as Clara Desmond; and then, probably, in some indistinct way, she remembered the broad acres to which he was the heir, and comforted herself by reflecting that this at least was a match which none would think disgraceful for a daughter even of an Earl of Desmond.

But sadder thoughts did come when that figure had wholly disappeared. Her eye, looking out into the darkness, could not but see another figure on which it had often in past times delighted almost unconsciously to dwell. There, walking on that very road, another lover, another Fitzgerald, had sworn that he loved her; and had truly sworn so, as she well knew. She had never doubted his truth to her, and did not doubt it now;—and yet she had given herself away to another.

And in many things he too, that other lover, had been noble and gracious, and fit for a woman to love. In person he exceeded all that she had ever seen or dreamed of; and why should we think that personal excellence is to count for nothing in female judgment, when in that of men it ranks so immeasurably above all other excellences? His bearing, too, was chivalrous and bold, his language full of poetry, and his manner of loving eager, impetuous, and of a kin to worship. Then, too, he was now in misfortune; and when has that failed to soften even the softness of a woman's heart?

It was impossible that she should not make comparisons, comparisons that were so distasteful to her; impossible, also, that she should not accuse herself of some falseness to that first lover. The time to us, my friends, seems short enough since she was walking there, and listening with childish delight to Owen's protestations of love. It was but little more than one year since: but to her those months had been very long. And, reader, if thou hast arrived at any period of life which enables thee to count thy past years by lustrums; if thou art at a time of life, past thirty we will say, hast thou not found that thy years, which are now short enough, were long in those bygone days?