"Very well, mamma. I suppose he can wait below?"
"Why should he wait below?" said Mrs. Van Siever, very angrily.
Clara had made the uncourteous proposition to her mother with the express intention of making it understood that she would have nothing to say to him. "He can come upstairs if he likes it," said Clara; "and I will go up to my room."
"If you fight shy of him, miss, you may remember this,—that you will fight shy of me at the same time."
"I am sorry for that, mamma, for I shall certainly fight shy of Mr. Musselboro."
"You can do as you please. I can't force you, and I shan't try. But I can make your life a burden to you,—and I will. What's the matter with the man that he isn't good enough for you? He's as good as any of your own people ever was. I hate your new-fangled airs,—with pictures painted on the sly, and all the rest of it. I hate such ways. See what they have brought that wretched man to, and the poor fool his wife. If you go and marry that painter, some of these days you'll be very much like what she is. Only I doubt whether he has got courage enough to blow his brains out." With these comfortable words, the old woman took herself off, leaving Clara to entertain her lover as best she might choose.
Mr. Musselboro was not long in coming, and, in accordance with Mrs. Van Siever's implied directions to her daughter, was shown up into the drawing-room. Clara gave him her mother's message in a very few words. "I was expressly told, sir, to ask you to stop, if it is not inconvenient, as she very much wants to see you." Mr. Musselboro declared that of course he would stop. He was only too happy to have an opportunity of remaining in such delightful society. As Clara answered nothing to this, he went on to say that he hoped that the melancholy occasion of Mrs. Van Siever's visit to Mrs. Broughton might make a long absence necessary,—he did not, indeed, care how long it might be. He had recovered now from that paleness, and that want of gloves and jewellery which had befallen him on the previous day immediately after the sight he had seen in the City. Clara made no answer to the last speech, but, putting some things together in her work-basket, prepared to leave the room. "I hope you are not going to leave me?" he said, in a voice that was intended to convey much of love, and something of melancholy.
"I am so shocked by what has happened, Mr. Musselboro, that I am altogether unfit for conversation. I was with poor Mrs. Broughton last night, and I shall return to her when mamma comes home."
"It is sad, certainly; but what was there to be expected? If you'd only seen how he used to go on." To this Clara made no answer. "Don't go yet," said he; "there is something that I want to say to you. There is, indeed."
Clara Van Siever was a young woman whose presence of mind rarely deserted her. It occurred to her now that she must undergo on some occasion the nuisance of a direct offer from this man, and that she could have no better opportunity of answering him after her own fashion than the present. Her mother was absent, and the field was her own. And, moreover, it was a point in her favour that the tragedy which had so lately occurred, and to which she had just now alluded, would give her a fair excuse for additional severity. At such a moment no man could, she told herself, be justified in making an offer of his love, and therefore she might rebuke him with the less remorse. I wonder whether the last words which Conway Dalrymple had spoken to her stung her conscience as she thought of this! She had now reached the door, and was standing close to it. As Mr. Musselboro did not at once begin, she encouraged him. "If you have anything special to tell me, of course I will hear you," she said.