“I should like to go too,” said Edgar. “No? Well, I won’t then; but tell Miss Somers I will come to-morrow, Clare. Tell her I have brought her something from Constantinople; and have never forgotten how kind she used to be--how kind you all were!” And the young man turned round upon them--“It is a strange sensation coming back and feeling myself at home among the faces I have known all my life. And thank you all for being so good to Clare.” Clare was going out as he spoke, with a certain shade of reluctance and even of pride. She had been told to go, and she did not like it; it had been implied that she had forgotten a duty of neighbourship, and to Miss Somers, too, who could not move about, and ascertain things for herself; and Clare did not like to be reminded of her duties. She turned round, however, at the door, and looked back, and smiled her acknowledgment of what her brother said. These two old men had been very kind to her. They had done everything that the most attached old friends could do at the time of her father’s death. That was a whole year ago; for old Squire Arden had made a stipulation that his son was not to come back, nor enter upon the possession of his right, till he was five-and-twenty--a stipulation which, of course, counted for nothing in the eye of the law, but was binding on Edgar, much as he longed to be at his sister’s side. Thus, his father oppressed him down to the very edge of his grave. And poor Clare would have been very forlorn in the great house but for her old friends. Miss Somers, who was not then so great an invalid, had gone to the Hall, to be with the girl during that time of seclusion, and she had been as a child to all of them. A compunction smote Clare as she turned and looked round from the door, and she kissed her hand to them with a pretty gesture. But still it was with rather an ill grace that she went to Miss Somers, which was not her own impulse. Compulsion fretted the Arden soul. “I brought Clare into the world, and Fielding has been her head nurse all his life,” said the Doctor, “no need for thanking us on that score. And now all’s yours, Edgar. I may say, and I’m sure Fielding will say, how thankful we both are to see you. You could not have been altogether disinherited, as the property’s entailed; but I never was easy in my mind about it during your father’s lifetime. The old Squire was a very peculiar man; and there was no telling----” “Doctor,” said the young man, once more with a flush on his cheek, “would you mind leaving out my father’s name in anything that has to be said?--unless, indeed, he left any message for me. He liked Clare best, which was not wonderful, and he thought me a poor representative of the Ardens, which was natural enough. I have not a word to say against him. On the whole, perhaps, I have got as much good of my life as if I had been brought up in England. I have never been allowed to forget hitherto that my father did not care for me--let me forget it now.”