Of course it is quite impossible to hide from Clarissa Peyton that everything is going wrong at Sartoris. Georgie's pale unsmiling face (so different from that of old), and Dorian's evident determination to absent himself from all society, tell their own tale. She has, of course, heard of the uncomfortable gossip that has connected Ruth Annersley's mysterious disappearance with Dorian, but--stanch friend as she is--has laughed to scorn all such insinuations: that Georgie can believe them, puzzles her more than she cares to confess. For a long time she has fought against the thought that Dorian's wife can think aught bad of Dorian; but time undeceives her. To-day, Georgie, who is now always feverishly restless, tells herself she will go up to Gowran and see Clarissa. To her alone she clings,--not outwardly, in any marked fashion, but in her inmost soul,--as to one who at her worst extremity will support and comfort her. The day is warm and full of color. Round her "flow the winds from woods and fields with gladness laden:" the air is full of life. The browning grass rustles beneath her feet. The leaves fall slowly one by one, as though loath to leave their early home; the wind, cruel, like all love, wooes them only to their doom. "The waves, along the forest borne," beat on her face and head, and half cool the despairing thoughts that now always lie hidden deep down within her breast. Coming to Gowran and seeing Clarissa in the drawing room window, she beckons to her, and Clarissa, rising hastily, opens the hall door for her, herself, and leads her by the hand into another cosier room, where they may talk without interruption. It so happens that Georgie is in one of her worst moods; and something Clarissa says very innocently brings on a burst of passion that compels Clarissa to understand (in spite of all her efforts to think herself in the wrong) that the dissensions at Sartoris have a great deal to do with Ruth Annersley. "It is impossible," she says, over and over again, walking up and down the room in an agitated manner. "I could almost as soon believe Horace guilty of this thing!" Georgie makes no reply. Inwardly she has conceived a great distaste to the handsome Horace, and considers him a very inferior person, and quite unfit to mate with her pretty Clarissa. "In your heart," says Miss Peyton, stopping before her, "I don't believe you think Dorian guilty of this thing." "Yes I do," says Mrs. Branscombe, with dogged calmness. "I don't ask you to agree with me. I only tell you what I myself honestly believe." She has given up fighting against her fate by this time.