She was in the wide open place near the park, when she heard footsteps following her, rapidly, and with a purpose, as it seemed. Some women have a kind of instinct about these things. She knew in a moment, as if by some subtle magnetism, that the man following her was George Fairfax.
"Clarissa," said a voice close in her ear; and turning quickly, she found herself face to face with him.
"I was in the church," he said, "and have followed you all the way here. I waited till we were clear of the narrow streets and the crowd. O, my darling, thank God I have found you! I only knew yesterday that you had left Paris; and some happy instinct brought me here. I felt sure you would come to Austin. I arrived late last night, and was loafing about the streets this morning, wondering how I should discover your whereabouts, when I turned a corner and saw you going into St. Gudule. I followed, but would not disturb your orisons, fair saint. I was not very far off, Clarissa—only on the other side of the pillar."
"Was it kind of you to follow me here, Mr. Fairfax?" Clarissa asked gravely. "Have you not brought enough trouble upon me as it is?"
"Brought trouble upon you! Yes, that seems hard; but I suppose it was my fate to do that, and to make amends for it afterwards, dearest, in a life that shall know no trouble."
"I am here with my son, Mr. Fairfax. It was the fear of being separated from him that drove me away from Paris. If you have one spark of generous feeling, you will not pursue me or annoy me here. If my husband were to see us together, or were to hear of our being seen together, he would have just grounds for taking my child away from me."
"Clarissa," exclaimed George Fairfax, with intensity, "let us make an end of all folly and beating about the bush at once and for ever. I do not say that I am not sorry for what happened the other night—so far as it caused annoyance to you—but I am heartily glad that matters have been brought to a crisis. The end must have come sooner or later, Clary—so much the better if it has come quickly. There is only one way to deal with the wretched mistake of your marriage, and that is to treat it as a thing that has never been. There are places enough in the world, Clary, in which you and I are nameless and unknown, and we can be married in one of those places. I will run all risks of a criminal prosecution and seven years at Portland. You shall be my wife, Clarissa, by as tight a knot as Church and State can tie."
She looked at him with a half scornful smile.
"Do you think you are talking to a child?" she said.
They had been standing in the chill drizzling rain all this time, unconscious, and would have so stood, perhaps, if a shower of fire and brimstone had been descending upon Brussels. But at this juncture Mr. Fairfax suddenly discovered that it was raining, and that Clarissa's shawl was growing rapidly damper.