“Nothing is the matter which you can help, Mr. Calladine, thank you, and nothing that I shall not recover from.” She spoke the truth as far as she knew it. “I own that I have been vexed,--even hurt, perhaps,” she put her head up as she made the admission. “But I could scarcely hope to go through life, could I, without meeting some vexation by the way? and now that I have met it, I must take it, mustn’t I, without losing my sense of proportion?” He smiled, in the darkness which secured his smile from her observation, at the phraseology of her piteous wisdom. “But why not confide it to me?” he said, bending down towards her. “I am older than you, you know, and a trouble shared, they say, is a trouble halved.” “My God, no,” she breathed. He was shocked at such an expression on her lips. Had something or some one then really driven the child up to the bounds of her endurance? Was she too readily driven to such extremity of feeling? or was the provocation she had received sufficient to justify it? alas, he had no experience of her capacity for emotion. But he thought, from what he knew of her, that she must be indeed profoundly troubled before she would betray her distress. “If any man has hurt you,” he burst out, “only tell me his name.” She opened her mouth and stared at him as though she were about to utter a name as he bade her, so strong was in her the habit of childish obedience, but with the name ringing, although not for expression, in her head, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. He was appalled at the passion of her crying. She had sunk down upon a bench, and he knelt beside her, trying to pull her hands away from her face, but she shook her head and turned away from him, isolating herself in the grief she was not yet accustomed to and could not yet understand. She could not understand it, and, tormented, desired only an escape from its weight and astonishment. “I am crying because you made me cry,” she said, at last to Calladine; “I have not cried before,--I promise you I have not cried before,” and at the thought of Lovel, absent and unconscious that she was weeping, unconscious of the fruit his harshness had borne, she wept afresh. “Clare, Clare,” said Calladine, pulling at her wet hands, “don’t you remember, up by the Grey Wethers, a promise you made me? that if ever trouble came upon you, you would come to me for help? Don’t you remember,--the day of the Scouring? Where’s your promise gone now? I would have held my hand in a flame that you would never break your word. Perhaps you thought it was fancy on my part; I was never more deadly serious. Isn’t this the moment to give me my chance of serving you?”