Without knowing anything of the real facts of the story, the Thornleighs were admitted to see her, on Clare’s own suggestion; for her warped mind was cunning to see where an advantage could be drawn from partial publicity. They found her on her sofa, looking, in the paleness which had now become habitual to her, like a creature vanishing out of the living world. “Why did you not let us know you were ill? You must have been suffering long, and never complained!” cried Lady Augusta, moved almost to tears. “Not very long,” said Clare. She had permitted her husband to be present at this interview, to keep up appearances to the last; and Arthur felt as if every word was a dart aimed at him, though I do not think she meant it so. “Not long! My dear child, you are quite thin and wasted; this cannot have come on all at once. But Italy will do you all the good in the world,” Lady Augusta added, trying to be cheerful. “_They_, you know, are going to Italy too.” “But not near where I shall be,” said Clare. “You must go further south? I am very sorry. Gussy and you would have been company for each other. You are not strong enough for company? My poor child! But once out of these cold spring winds, you will do well,” said kind Lady Augusta. But though she thus took the matter on the surface, she felt that there was more below. Her looks grew more and more perplexed as they discussed Edgar’s appointment, and the humble beginning which the young couple would make in the world. “It is very imprudent--very imprudent,” Lady Augusta said, shaking her head. “I have said all I can, Mrs. Arden, and so has Mr. Thornleigh. I don’t know how they are to get on. It is the most imprudent thing I ever heard of.” “Nothing is imprudent,” said Clare, with a hard, dry intonation, which took all pleasant meaning out of the words, “when you can trust fully for life or death; and my brother Edgar is one whom everybody can trust.” “At all events, we are both of us old enough to know our own minds,” said Gussy, hastily, trying to laugh off this impression. “If we choose to starve together, who should prevent us?” Arthur Arden took them to their carriage, but Lady Augusta remarked that he did not go upstairs again. “There is something in all this more than meets the eye,” she said, oracularly.