"Not before he writes to you, Clara! You would not wish to be indelicate?" "I know but little about delicacy--what people call delicacy; but I will not be ungenerous or unkind. Mamma, you brought us two together. Was it not so? Did you not do so, fearing that I might--might still care for Herbert's cousin? You did it; and half wishing to obey you, half attracted by all his goodness, I did learn to love Herbert Fitzgerald; and I did learn to forget--no; but I learned to cease to love his cousin. You did this and rejoiced at it; and now what you did must remain done." "But, dearest Clara, it will not be for his good." "It shall be for his good. Mamma, I would not desert him now for all that the world could give me. Neither for mother nor brother could I do that. Without your leave I would not have given him the right to regard me as his own; but now I cannot take that right back again, even at your wish. I must write to him at once, mamma, and tell him this." "Clara, at any rate you must not do that; that at least I must forbid." "Mother, you cannot forbid it now," the daughter said, after walking twice the length of the room in silence. "If I be not allowed to send a letter, I shall leave the house and go to him." This was all very dreadful. Lady Desmond was astounded at the manner in which her daughter carried herself, and the voice with which she spoke. The form of her face was altered, and the very step with which she trod was unlike her usual gait. What would Lady Desmond do? She was not prepared to confine her daughter as a prisoner, nor could she publicly forbid the people about the place to go upon her message. "I did not expect that you would have been so undutiful," she said. "I hope I am not so," Clara answered. "But now my first duty is to him. Did you not sanction our loving each other? People cannot call back their hearts and their pledges." "You will at any rate wait till to-morrow, Clara." "It is dark now," said Clara, despondingly, looking out through the window upon the falling night; "I suppose I cannot send to-night." "And you will show me what you write, dearest?" "No, mamma. If I wrote it for your eyes it could not be the same as if I wrote it only for his." Very gloomy, sombre, and silent, was the Countess of Desmond all that night. Nothing further was said about the Fitzgeralds between her and her daughter, before they went to bed; and then Lady Desmond did speak a few futile words. "Clara," she said. "You had better think over what we have been saying, in bed to-night. You will be more collected to-morrow morning." "I shall think of it of course," said Clara; "but thinking can make no difference," and then just touching her mother's forehead with her lips she went off slowly to her room.