The conversation which Arthur Arden thrust upon Clare by persistently waiting for her in the avenue was not a satisfactory one. Though she could not refuse to accept his explanation that he knew nothing about the strangers, yet a sense of uneasiness and discomfort remained in her mind. When once it is suggested that such secrets exist in a world which looks all fair and straightforward, it is difficult for a young mind to throw off at once the shock of the suggestion. Clare looked at her cousin, who was so much older than herself, and who had been so much in the world, acquiring, no doubt experiences of which she knew nothing, and shrank just a little aside, closing herself up, and putting on all her defences. “How do I know what his life has been, what things may have happened to him?” she said to herself. With a certain mingling of attraction and repulsion, she glanced at him from under her eyelashes. He had lived a man’s life, which is so different from a woman’s; he had been abroad in the world, swept along in the great current, driven from one place to another, from one society to another. And Clare felt that she could never tell what recollections he might have brought out of that great ocean in which he had been sailing, which was so unknown to her, and doubtless so distinct and clear to him. He might have left cares and sorrows behind him--nay, was it not certain that he must have left many a trace behind him, being such a man as he was? As she walked on beside him this feeling came over her so strongly that it swallowed up all other sentiments. She too had a little line of memories, innocent recollections, pangs of childish suffering, unjust reproofs, wounded self-love, and one great natural grief. It was like a little rivulet running under the bushes, hiding only the softest blameless secrets. But his must be like the sea, full of sunny islands and dark cliffs, with calms and storms in it, and havens and shipwrecks--things she could not possibly know of, except by some chance word now and then, and never could fully enter into. A certain admiration grew unconsciously in her mind, along with a great deal of dread and shrinking. What a fine thing it would be to be such a man! How wide his horizon in comparison with hers! How extended and varied his knowledge! Poor Clare! she shrank with a chilled sense that she never could partake or share this vast extent of experience; but it never occurred to her to inquire what kind of knowledge of the world is acquired at German gaming-tables. Clare’s imagination was utterly ignorant of the Turf, and the _coulisses_, and the Kursaal. She had an idea much more elevated than reality of the Clubs, and took it for granted that a man who was an Arden, even though he was poor, must have entrance always into the best society. He for his part walked by her side with the real recollections bubbling in his mind of which she formed so flattering a vision. He was remembering various