Lady Desmond did not answer her daughter at once; but she was not silent because an answer failed her. Her answer would have been ready enough had she dared to speak it out. "Yes, it is true; we have been poor. I, your mother, did by my imprudence bring down upon my head and on yours absolute, unrelenting, pitiless poverty. And because I did so, I have never known one happy hour. I have spent my days in bitter remorse--in regretting the want of those things which it has been the more terrible to want as they are the customary attributes of people of my rank. I have been driven to hate those around me who have been rich, because I have been poor. I have been utterly friendless because I have been poor. I have been able to do none of those sweet, soft, lovely things, by doing which other women win the smiles of the world, because I have been poor. Poverty and rank together have made me wretched--have left me without employment, without society, and without love. And now would you tell me that because I have been poor you would choose to be poor also?" It would have been thus that she would have answered, had she been accustomed to speak out her thoughts. But she had ever been accustomed to conceal them. "I was thinking quite as much of him as of you," at last she said. "Such an engagement to you would be fraught with much misery, but to him it would be ruinous." "I do not think it, mamma." "But it is not necessary, Clara, that you should do anything. You will wait, of course, and see what Herbert may say himself." "Herbert--" "Wait half a moment, my love. I shall be very much surprised if we do not find that Mr. Fitzgerald himself will tell you that the match must be abandoned." "But that will make no difference, mamma." "No difference, my dear! You cannot marry him against his will. You do not mean to say that you would wish to bind him to his engagement, if he himself thought it would be to his disadvantage?" "Yes; I will bind him to it." "Clara!" "I will make him know that it is not for his disadvantage. I will make him understand that a friend and companion who loves him as I love him--as no one else will ever love him now--for I love him because he was so high-fortuned when he came to me, and because he is now so low-fortuned--that such a wife as I will be, cannot be a burden to him. I will cling to him whether he throws me off or no. A word from him might have broken our engagement before, but a thousand words cannot do it now." Lady Desmond stared at her daughter, for Clara, in her excitement, was walking up and down the room. The countess had certainly not expected all this, and she was beginning to think that the subject for the present might as well be left alone. But Clara had not done as yet. "Mamma," she said, "I will not do anything without telling you; but I cannot leave Herbert in all his misery to think that I have no sympathy with him. I shall write to him."