When Sam Winnington did come down next, Clary had such honour and spirit, that she ordered the door to be shut in his face; but then she cried far more bitterly than she had done to Uncle Barnet, in the same hall where Sam had painted her and jested with her; and somehow her affliction reached Sam's ears, living in a little place like Redwater at the "Rod and Fly" for several days on end.
At last another spice entered into the dish; another puppet appeared on the boards, and increased the disorder of the former puppets. The county member did turn up. Clary was a prophet: he came on a visit to his cousin the Justice, and was struck with tall, red and white, and large-eyed Clary; he furbished up an introduction, and offered her the most marked attention.
Mistress Clarissa was in ecstasy, so her gossips declared, and so she almost persuaded herself, even after she had certain drawbacks to her pleasure, and certain cares intruding upon her exultation; after she was again harassed and pestered with the inconvenient resuscitation of that incorrigible little plain, vain portrait painter, Sam Winnington. He was plain—he had not the county member's Roman nose; and he was vain—Clary had already mimicked the fling of his cravat, and the wave of his white hands. Clever, smart fellows, like Sam Winnington, are generally coxcombs. Oh, Sam! where, in order to serve your own turn now, be your purple shadows, your creamy whites, your marvellous reading of people's characters, and writing of the same on their faces, their backs, their very hands and feet, which should leave the world your delighted debtor long after it had forgotten yon member's mighty services?
Clarissa had never danced so many dances with one evening's partner as with the smitten member, at the assembly given on the spur of the moment in his honour, whereat Sam Winnington, standing with his hat under his arm, and leaning against the carved door, was an observant spectator. He was not sullen as when Will Locke and Dulcie tumbled headlong into the pit of matrimony! he was smiling and civil; but his lips were white and his eyes sunken, as if the energetic young painter did not sleep of nights.
Clary was not sincere; she gave that infatuated, tolerably heavy, red-faced, fox-hunting member, own cousin to the Justice, every reason to suppose that she would lend him the most favourable ear, when he chose to pay her his addresses, and then afforded him the amplest provocation to cry, "Caprice—thy name is woman." She had just sung "Tantivy" to him after supper, when she sailed up to Sam Winnington, and addressed him demurely:—
"I have come to wish you good-night, sir."
"And I to wish you farewell, madam."
"Farewell is a hard word, Master Winnington," returned Clary, with a great tide of colour rushing into her face, and a gasp as for breath, and tracing figures nervously on the floor with her little shoe and its brave paste-buckle.
"It shall be said though, and that without further delay, unless three very different words be put in its place."
"Sir, you are tyrannous," protested Clary, in a tremulous voice.