Was she going to be happy and useful? Was she going to be something more than the rich Miss Carruthers, the heiress of Poynings, who had every luxury life could supply, except that of feeling herself of active individual importance to any living creature? Was Poynings going to be as pleasant as the Sycamores, and for a more worthy reason? Clare felt in her honest young heart that the superiority of the Sycamores consisted principally in the fact that the uncle who inhabited that abode was never in her way, whereas the uncle who ruled at Poynings was generally otherwise, and unpleasant. It was very ungrateful of her to feel this; but she did feel it. Was all this going to be altered? Was she going to have the sort of feeling that might have been hers if she had not been the heiress of Poynings, but the real, own daughter of a kind lady who needed and would accept all her girlish love and eager, if unskilful, care? It must be so, Clare thought, now Mrs. Carruthers had her son with her, and she no longer felt that there was injustice done to her, for which Clare was made the reason or the pretext, she would allow her to be all she had always desired to be. How much uselessness, unreality, weariness, fell away from Clare Carruthers as she rode on, the beautiful healthful colour rising higher in her cheeks as the glad thoughts, the vague, sweet, unselfish hopes of the future, expanded in her young heart! She would tell Mrs. Carruthers some day when she was quite well, when there should be no longer any danger of doing her harm by the revelation, about the mystery which had caused her so much suffering, and then, when there should be perfect confidence between them, she would tell her how she had discovered that she, too, was acquainted with Paul Ward. Clare had never speculated seriously upon the cause of Mrs. Carruthers's illness. Her first convictions were, that it had originated in some trouble about her son. The old housekeeper's manner, the removal of the portrait, had sufficed for Clare. This was a sacred sorrow, sacred from Clare's curiosity, even in her thoughts. And now it was at an end, probably thanks to Mark Felton; but, at all events, it was quite over. In the time to come, that future which Clare's fancy was painting so brightly, as her horse carried her swiftly over the familiar road, Mrs. Carruthers might even love her well enough to tell her the story of the past, and what that terrible grief had been. "I am to take Thomas up to town with me, Mrs. Brookes, and I only wish you were coming too," said Clare to the housekeeper at Poynings, as a concluding item of the budget of news she had to tell. Clare was in high spirits by this time. Mrs. Brookes was much more friendly than usual to the young lady, whom she, too, had always regarded with jealousy, and almost dislike, as the enemy of George.