"And that is Clare Carruthers! I thought I had seen that head before, that graceful neck, that crown of golden hair. Yes, it is she; and little she thinks whom she is about to bring into her uncle's house--the outcast and exile from Poynings! I will see it out; why should I not? I owe nothing to Carruthers that I should avoid this fair, sweet girl, because he chooses to banish me from her presence. What a presence it is! What am I that I should come into it?" He paused a moment, and a bitter tide of remembrance and self-reproach rushed over him, almost overwhelming him. Then he went on more quickly, and with a flushed cheek and heated brow, for anger was again rising within him. "You are very clever as well as very obstinate, my worthy stepfather, but you are not omnipotent yet. Your darling niece, the beauty, the heiress, the great lady, the treasure of price to be kept from the sight of me, from the very knowledge of anything so vile and lost, has met me, in the light of day, not by any device of mine, and has spoken to me, not in strained, forced courtesy, but of her own free will. What would you think of that, I wonder, if you knew it! And my mother? If the girl should ask my name, and should tell my mother of her chance meeting with a wandering artist, one Paul Ward, what will my mother think?--my dear conscientious mother, who has done for me what wounds her conscience so severely, and who will feel as if it were wounded afresh by this accidental meeting, with which she has nothing in the world to do." He lifted his hat, and fanned his face with it. His eyes were gleaming, his colour had risen; he looked strong, daring, active, and handsome--a man whom an innocent girl, all unlearned in life and in the world's ways, might well exalt in her guileless fancy into a hero, and be pardoned her mistake by older, sadder, and wiser heads.