Clare found herself very often doing or not doing, saying or refraining from saying, some particular thing, in order to avoid "getting Mrs. Carruthers into a scrape," and of course she was aware that the constantly-recurring necessity for such carefulness argued, at the least, a difficult temper to deal with in the head of the household; but she did not let the matter trouble her much. She would think, when she thought about it at all, with the irrepressible self-complacency of youth, how careful _she_ would be not to marry an ill-tempered man, or, at all events, she would make up her mind to marry a man so devotedly attached to her that his temper would not be of the slightest consequence, as, of course, she should never suffer from it. On the whole, it would be difficult to find a more dangerous condition of circumstances than that in which Clare Carruthers was placed when her romantic meeting with Paul Ward took place--a meeting in which the fates seemed to have combined every element of present attraction and future danger. Practically, Clare was quite alone; she placed implicit confidence in no one, she had no guide for her feelings or actions, and she had just drifted into a position in which she needed careful direction. She refrained from mentioning her meeting with the stranger, more on Mrs. Carruthers's account than on her own, from the usual motive--apprehension lest, by some unreasonable turn of Mr. Carruthers's temper, she might be brought "into a scrape." Her curiosity had been strongly excited by the discovery that Mrs. Carruthers had some sort of acquaintance with Paul Ward, or, at least, with his name; but she adhered to her resolution, and kept silence for the present. Mrs. Carruthers's son had always been an object of tacit interest to Clare. She had not been fully informed of the circumstances of her uncle's marriage, and she understood vaguely that George Dallas was an individual held in disfavour by the august master of Poynings; so her natural delicacy of feeling conquered her curiosity, and she abstained from mentioning George to his mother or to Mr. Carruthers, and also from giving encouragement to the gossip on the subject which occasionally arose in her presence. In Mrs. Carruthers's dressing-room a portrait hung, which Clare had been told by Mrs. Brookes was that of her mistress's son, when a fine, brave, promising boy of ten years old. Clare had felt an interest in the picture, not only for Mrs. Carruthers's sake, but because she liked the face which it portrayed--the clear bright brown eyes, the long curling hair, the brilliant dark complexion, the bold, frank, gleeful expression. Once or twice she had said a few words in praise of the picture, and once she had ventured to ask Mrs. Carruthers if her son still resembled it. The mother had answered her, with a sigh, that he was greatly changed, and no one would now recognize the picture as a likeness of him.