Some words read a week ago come to him now, and ring their changes on his brain. "Rien ne va plus,"—the hateful words return to him with a pertinacity not to be subdued. It is with difficulty he refrains from uttering them aloud.
"No; he does not disapprove," says Clarissa, interrupting his reflections at this moment: "he has given his full consent to my engagement." She speaks somewhat slowly, as if remembrance weighs upon her. "And, even if he had not, there is still something that must give me happiness: it is the certainty that Horace loves me, and that I love him."
Though unmeant, this is a cruel blow. Sir James turns away, and, paling visibly,—had she cared to see it,—plucks a tiny piece of bark from the old tree against which he is leaning.
There is something in his face that, though she understands it not, moves Clarissa to pity.
"You will wish me some good wish, after all, Jim, won't you?" she says, very sweetly, almost pathetically.
"No, I cannot," returns he with a brusquerie foreign to him. "To do so would be actual hypocrisy."
There is silence for a moment: Clarissa grows a little pale, in her turn. In his turn, he takes no notice of her emotion, having his face averted. Then, in a low, faint, choked voice, she breaks the silence.
"If I had been wise," she says, "I should have stayed at home this morning, and kept my confidences to myself. Yet I wanted to tell you. So I came, thinking, believing, I should receive sympathy from you; and now what have I got? Only harsh and cruel words! If I had known—"
"Clarissa!"
"Yes! If any one had told me you would so treat me, I should—should—"