“Clare!”
She looked up with a violent start, rising from her seat, and perceived him standing over her—he whom she had tried to put out of her calculations, and think of no more. She had been planning a proud miserable life retired out of sight of all men, specially hidden from him. She had resolved he should not even know where she was to insult her with his pity—neither he nor Edgar should know; for Clare was quite unaware that the discovery which lost her a brother lost her a fortune too. But now at the moment when she was most miserable, most forlorn, forming the most dreary plans, here he was! The sight of him took away her breath, and almost her senses, for the moment. She said, “Is it you?” faintly, gazing at him with dilated eyes and parched lips, as if he had been a ghost. The surprise was so great that it threw down all her defences, and brought her back to simple reality. She was not glad to see him—these were not the words; but his sudden coming was like life to the dead.
And he too was touched by the sight of her utter dejection and solitude. He dropped down on one knee beside her as she reseated herself, and took her hand. “My Clare!” he said, “my Clare! why did you fly from me? Is not my house your house, and my life yours? Is there any one so near to you as me? Even now I have the only claim upon you; and when you are my wife——”
“No such word has ever been spoken between us,” said Clare, making an effort to resume her old dignity. “Mr. Arden, rise—you forget——”
“I don’t forget anything,” said Arthur. “There was one between us that took it upon him to keep me away, that prevented me from seeing you, prejudiced you against me, and has all but beguiled you away from me. But, Clare, you see through it now. Are words necessary between you and me? When I was a beggar I might hesitate to ask you to share my poverty, but now—— Don’t you know that I would rather have you without Arden than Arden without you——”
Let him take everything else, as long as he leaves me you—these had been the words Arthur Arden had spoken two days ago. They rang in Clare’s ears as clearly as if he had just pronounced them, and they had an echo in his own memory. But neither of them referred to that vain offer now—neither of them said a syllable of Edgar. “If he had not so shocked me, so repelled me, brought in that woman,” Clare said to herself in faint self-apology—but not a word did she say aloud. She laid down her head on Arthur Arden’s shoulder, and wept away the accumulated excitement and irritation and misery of the past night. She did not reproach him for his delay or ask a single question. She had wanted him, oh, so sorely! and he had come at last.
“It is too great happiness,” said Arthur, when they had sat there all the bright morning through and made their plans, “that you and I should spend all our lives together in Arden, Clare. To have you anywhere would have seemed too much joy a month ago; but you and Arden! which I have been kept out of, banished from, treated as a stranger in——”
“Do not think of that now, do not think of that now! Oh, Arthur, if you love me, be kind to him.”
“Kind to him! when he had all but succeeded in severing you from me, in carrying you away, with Heaven knows what intention. But, my Clare,” said the new Squire Arden, with that paper in his pocket, of which he did not say a word to her, “for your sake!”
And Clare believed him, every word—she who was not credulous, nor full of faith, and who prided herself that she knew the world—her own world, in which people were moved by comprehensible motives, not visionary impulses. Clare believed her lover. He would be kind, he would not be too hard or unmerciful. He would forgive the usurper, the Edgar who was Mrs. Murray’s son. She stifled every other feeling in that moment of love and intoxication—if, indeed, at such a time there was room for any other feeling towards the Edgar who had been the brother of her youth.