"How you say that!"--reproachfully. "It sounds untrue! Yet it can't be. What could any one say against Horace?" "My dear, I said nothing." "No, but you insinuated it. You said Dorian was his superior." "Well, I think he is the better man of the two," said Mr. Peyton, desperately, hardly knowing what to say, and feeling sorely aggrieved in that he is compelled to say what must hurt her. "I cannot understand you; you said you know nothing prejudicial to Horace (it is impossible you should), and yet you think Dorian the better man. If he has done no wrong, why should any one be a better man? Why draw the comparison at all? For the first time in all your life, you are unjust." "No, Clarissa, I am not. At least, I think not. Injustice is a vile thing. But, somehow, Sartoris and I had both made up our minds that you would marry Dorian, and----" He pauses. "Then your only objection to poor Horace is that he is not Dorian?" asks she, anxiously, letting her hand once more rest upon his shoulder. "Well, no doubt there is a great deal in that," returns he, evasively, hard put to it to answer his inquisitor with discretion. "And if Dorian had never been, Horace would be the one person in all the world you would desire for me?" pursues she, earnestly. George Peyton makes no reply to this,--perhaps because he has not one ready. Clarissa, stepping back, draws her breath a little quickly, and a dark fire kindles in her eyes. In her eyes, too, large tears rise and shine. "It is because he is poor," she says, in a low tone, that has some contempt in it, and some passionate disappointment. "Do not mistake me," says her father, speaking hastily, but with dignity. Rising, he pushes back his chair, and turning, faces her in the gathering twilight. "Were he the poorest man alive, and you loved him, and he was worthy of you, I would give you to him without a murmur. Not that"--hurriedly--"I consider Horace unworthy of you, but the idea is new, strange, and----the other day, Clarissa, you were a child." "I am your child still,--always." She is sitting on his knee now, with her arms round his neck, and her cheek against his; and he is holding her _svelte_ lissome figure very closely to him. She is the one thing he has to love on earth; and just now she seems unspeakably--almost painfully--dear to him. "Always, my dear," he reiterates, somewhat unsteadily. "You have seen so little of Horace lately," she goes on, presently, trying to find some comfortable reason for what seems to her her father's extraordinary blindness to her lover's virtues. "When you see a great deal of him, you will love him! As it is, darling, do--_do_ say you like him very much, or you will break my heart!" "I like him very much," replies he, obediently, repeating his lesson methodically, while feeling all the time that he is being compelled to say something against his will, without exactly knowing why he should feel so.