The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor little Claire creeping unwillingly to the great house on one of her father’s miserable errands, only to be snubbed and coldly received by every one, struck him like a stab. “Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she had so good a right to expect to be well received as here?” said he, with difficulty controlling the emotion he felt. “A young girl, doing her best to fulfil every duty, with no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the name. And you are her relations; here there were women, ladies, who knew all about her, and who might be expected to sympathize with her difficulties and her troubles!” Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with nice care, but uttering them with deep feeling, paused, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. But there was no mercy in the fiery black eyes, or about the cold, handsome mouth. “They would have shown her every sympathy,” said he coldly, “if she had not abused the privilege of intimacy by trying to ensnare my son.” “Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do you really think Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to run after him? Why, for every time Miss Biron’s been up here--sent here by her father, mind--he’s been three or four or five times down at the farm!” Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement he betrayed that this was just what he had wanted to know. His face clouded more than before. “Ah!” said he shortly, “that’s what I’ve been told. Well, it’s the girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a scrape, she has no one but herself to thank for it, no one. Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?” He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead silence. A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart; he could not but understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had made, accompanied as it was by a look, the significance of which there was no mistaking. Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of his imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel suspicion which can assail a woman, the suspicion of having held her honor too lightly. Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it. But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the danger of his repairing his supposed error.