'Many—yes, and lovely women, too; but never have I felt a touch of even the slightest passing pang or preference for any one out of the many.'
Clare gazed at him softly and sweetly. She did not, she could not, tell him that in the intervals of a brilliant garden party she had rejected for the third time the passionate supplications and proposals of one who could have made her a marchioness; and those who knew of this thought her cold and proud, but they were wrong, for Clare was 'one of those women who, beneath the courtly negligence of a chill manner, are capable of infinite tenderness, infinite nobility, and infinite self-reproach,' and her heart was loving, tender, sweet, and warm as a summer rose to those who knew her, and whom she loved.
The mist was dispelling fast now.
Again they were discovering, or recalling, all that was sympathetic in each other, and learning to understand each other by word, and hint, or glance, when soul seemed to speak to soul, and more than all, when hand met hand, did Clare feel that which she had never felt since their separation, how magnetic was the influence between them, and how no other hand had made the blood course through her veins as his had done.
The situation was becoming perilous, and Sir Carnaby might at any moment come upon them, like the ogre of a fairy tale, or the irate father of a melodrama.
'I must go, Clare,' said he, but yet he lingered.
Again he was calling her by her name—her Christian name—as of old, in the dear past time, and how sweetly it sounded in her ear!
'Trevor,' said she, pressing a hand on her heart as if to soothe its throbbing, while she leant on a table with the other, 'stay yet a moment.'
Clare was with him again; he was conscious of nothing more; and the old love that had never passed out of his heart, or hers either, stronger now than it had ever been, made him linger in her presence, and made eye dwell on eye, tenderly, sadly, and passionately, till emotion got the better of all prudence, pride, and policy, and snatching the hand that was pressed upon her bosom, he besought her, in what terms, or with what words, he scarcely knew in the whirl of his thoughts, to be his wife at all risks and hazards.
But Clare drew her hand away, and mournfully shook her head, and then, with an effort, spoke calmly—