The very air seems dark, the sky leaden, the clouds sad and lowering. Vainly he tries to understand how he has come to love, with such a boundless passion, this girl, who loves him not at all, but has surrendered herself wholly to one unworthy of her,--one utterly incapable of comprehending the nobility and truthfulness of her nature. The world, that only yesterday seemed so desirable a place, to-day has lost its charm. "What is life, when stripped of its disguise? A thing to be desired it cannot be." With him it seems almost at an end. An unsatisfactory thing, too, at its best,--a mere "glimpse into the world of might have been." Some words read a week ago come to him now, and ring their changes on his brain. "Rien ne va plus,"--the hateful words return to him with a pertinacity not to be subdued. It is with difficulty he refrains from uttering them aloud. "No; he does not disapprove," says Clarissa, interrupting his reflections at this moment: "he has given his full consent to my engagement." She speaks somewhat slowly, as if remembrance weighs upon her. "And, even if he had not, there is still something that must give me happiness: it is the certainty that Horace loves me, and that I love him." Though unmeant, this is a cruel blow. Sir James turns away, and, paling visibly,--had she cared to see it,--plucks a tiny piece of bark from the old tree against which he is leaning. There is something in his face that, though she understands it not, moves Clarissa to pity. "You will wish me some good wish, after all, Jim, won't you?" she says, very sweetly, almost pathetically. "No, I cannot," returns he with a brusquerie foreign to him. "To do so would be actual hypocrisy." There is silence for a moment: Clarissa grows a little pale, in her turn. In _his_ turn, he takes no notice of her emotion, having his face averted. Then, in a low, faint, choked voice, she breaks the silence. "If I had been wise," she says, "I should have stayed at home this morning, and kept my confidences to myself. Yet I wanted to tell you. So I came, thinking, believing, I should receive sympathy from you; and now what have I got? Only harsh and cruel words! If I had known--" "Clarissa!" "Yes! If any one had told me you would so treat me, I should--should--" It is this supreme moment she chooses to burst out crying; and she cries heartily (by which I mean that she gives way to grief of the most vehement and agonized description) for at least five minutes, without a cessation, making her lament openly, and in a carefully unreserved fashion, intended to reduce his heart to water. And not in vain is _her_ "weak endeavor." Sir James, when the first sob falls upon his ear, turns from her, and, as though unable to endure the sound, deliberately walks away from her down the garden path.