"He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?"
"No."
"Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing. What is?"
"Ah! madam!"
"You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature is in existence?"
Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken out more than she had ever spoken to herself, and in doing so she had cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.
"I won't detain you any longer," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "The more we learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a very clever girl. If you change again, you will notify the important circumstance to me, I trust."
"I will," said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility of her changing again would have had such an effect on her hearer.
Mrs. Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with her later impressions.
"I am to do as I please with the knowledge I have gained?"