It may be thought that Clare must have observed her brother’s abstraction, his silent wanderings and musings, and the look of thought and care which he could not banish from his face; but the truth was that Clare herself was occupied by a hundred reflections. She had told her brother she hated Arthur Arden, and at the moment it was true; but now that Edgar, for whose sake she hated him, had condoned his offences, and asked him to the house, Clare, if her pride would have let her, might have confessed that she loved Arthur Arden, and it would have been equally true. He had exercised over her when she had seen him last that strange fascination which a man much older than herself often exercises over a girl. She had been pleased by the trouble he took to make himself agreeable, flattered by the attentions which a man of experience knows how to regulate according to the age and tastes of the subject under operation, and had felt the full charm of that kindred not near enough to be familiar, but yet sufficiently near to account for all kinds of mysterious affinities and sympathies which he knew so well how to make use of. He was a true Arden--everybody said so. And Clare, who was an Arden to the very finger tips, felt all the force of the bond. She had sighed secretly, wishing that her brother might have been like him. The tears had come into her eyes with affectionate pity that such a genuine representative of the family should be so poor; and again a little glow of generous warmth had followed, as a faint dream of how it might be made up to him stole across her mind. A man of such excellence and such grace--so distinguished by blood and talent, and all the qualities that adorn a hero, who could doubt that it would be made up to him? Honour would fall at his feet for the lifting up, and if wealth should be wanting, why then somebody whom Clare would try to love would endow him with everything that heart could desire, and herself best of all. She had nourished these notions until she had heard from Arthur himself, with one of the inadvertencies common to men whose consideration for others, however elaborate outside, does not come from the heart, of his opposition to her distant brother. He had taken it for granted that she must share her father’s opinion on the subject. “Why, you do not know him!” he had said, in his astonishment, when he became aware of his mistake. “I love my brother with all my heart,” was all the answer Clare had made. Something of the magniloquence of youth was in this large assertion; but the poor girl’s heart was very sore, and the struggle she had with herself in this wild sudden revulsion of feeling was almost more than she could bear. He was Edgar’s enemy, this man who had been too pleasant, only too tender to herself and she hated him! She had walked away from him at that painful moment, and when they met afterwards had only looked at him from behind the visor of cold pride