In the one hurried glance she casts at him, she knows that all is, indeed, over between them now; never again will he sue to her for love or friendship. She would have spoken again,—would, perhaps, have said something to palliate the harshness of her last words,—but by a gesture he forbids her. He points to the door.
"Leave the room," he says, in a stern commanding tone; and, utterly subdued and silenced by his manner, she turns and leaves him.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
"A goodly apple, rotten at the heart.
Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"—Merchant of Venice.
"No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on."—Othello.
Dorian has been two months gone, and it is once again close on Christmas-tide. All the world is beginning to think of gifts, and tender greetings, and a coming year. Clarissa is dreaming of wedding garments white as the snow that fell last night.
The post has just come in. Clarissa, waking, stretches her arms over her head with a little lazy delicious yawn, and idly turns over her letters one by one. But presently, as she breaks the seal of an envelope, and reads what lies inside it, her mood changes, and, springing from her bed, she begins to dress herself with nervous rapidity.
Three hours later, Sir James, sitting in his library, is startled by the apparition of Clarissa standing in the door-way with a very miserable face.
"What on earth has happened?" says Sir James, who is a very practical young man and always goes at once to the root of a mystery.