"Don't let us keep you if you ought to go," said Clary, with dismal propriety.
"I think I'll be off. Good-bye, Patience. The new cousin is radiant in beauty. No one can doubt that. But I don't know whether she is exactly the sort of girl I admire most. By-the-bye, what do you mean to do with her?"
"Do with her?" said Patience. "She will live here, of course."
"Just settle down as one of the family? Then, no doubt, I shall see her again. Good-night, Patience. Good-bye, Clary. I'll just step in and make my adieux to Sir Thomas and the beauty." This he did;—but as he went he pressed Clary's hand in a manner that she could but understand. She did not return the pressure, but she did not resent it.
"Clarissa," said Patience, when they were together that night, "dear Clarissa!"
Clary knew that when she was called Clarissa by her sister something special was meant. "What is it?" she asked. "What are you going to say now?"
"You know that I am thinking only of your happiness. My darling, he doesn't mean it."
"How do you know? What right have you to say so? Why am I to be thought such a fool as not to know what I ought to do?"
"Nobody thinks that you are a fool, Clary. I know how clever you are,—and how good. But I cannot bear that you should be unhappy. If he had meant it, he would have spoken to papa. If you will only tell me that you are not thinking of him, that he is not making you unhappy, I will not say a word further."
"I am thinking of him, and he is making me unhappy," said Clarissa, bursting into tears. "But I don't know why you should say that he is a liar, and dishonest, and everything that is bad."