In the ring now were three small bears, one dressed as a clergyman,--whose appearance had provoked roars of laughter,--one as a lady, with a poke bonnet and bustle, and the third as a clown, the buffoon and wag of the party. These three sad animals were at their tasks of travelling round the ring on large balls, pushing a perambulator, balancing on a tight rope, or whatever it might be; Lovel, in so far as he bestowed a passing interest in the show, was indignant at the pitiful degradation. The audience had no such niceness; they roared their hearty laughter, and some of those sitting immediately behind the scarlet ropes even thrust a foot towards the bears as they passed round in their drab monotony, provoking a dull turn of the head and a lack-lustre glance, too spiritless even for a snarl. Arm in arm the clergyman and the lady paraded the ring on their hind legs, stopping now and then to bow gravely; they stopped thus opposite to Clare and Calladine, recognised by the quick eye of the manager as the only gentry present. Clare and Lovel looked at one another once more when this occurred, a look in which their personal passion, for once, had no part, but only discomfort and sympathy with the indignity put upon the beasts. Yet that look, impersonal though it was, only tightened Lovel’s heart the more, for it had in it all the intimacy of their understanding, in the same way as when they had been used to look across the Downs, and, seeing the bowling shadows of the clouds, had spoken no word, but sometimes smiled, knowing each so well the thoughts that were passing in the mind of the other.