'Is it so very serious?' she asked. 'Oh—papa will be so sorry. But you'll feel differently when you have had time to think it over.'
'Circumstances don't change by being thought over.'
'No, but our view of them does.'
'Well, I can say this, Miss Stanley; if ever I could change my opinion of my brother's conduct I should be only too glad, and I should be the first to make advances towards reconciliation.'
'Why, surely, Mr Roland's done nothing wrong?'
'You may be sure he has, in my opinion at least, or I should not have spoken to him as I did; knowing, too, all that it involved,' he added in a lower voice.
'Oh, yes,' said Clare in quite an awestruck tone—all that her father had told her about old Mr Ferrier's will coming into her mind with a rush. 'Why, I had forgotten that.'
'Yes,' said Richard, looking straight at her for the first time that afternoon, 'I shall lose my living, and more, the hope of my life; but at anyrate, thank God, I keep my honour, and he has lost even that.'
Clare returned his gaze steadily.