The Rector shook his head. “I think I would have courage of mind to do what I advise,” he said; “he is too old for Clare, and he has not a good character, which is a great deal worse. He will make love to her one day, and then the next he will come down to the village----Faugh! I don’t like to soil my lips with talking of such things. He is not a good man. I love Clare like my own child, and I would fight to the last before I would give her to that man. He ought never to have come here, Edgar, never again.” “Did anything happen when he was here before; do you know anything?” said Edgar, eagerly. “He is your enemy, my dear boy, he is your enemy,” said Mr. Fielding; and that was all that could be elicited from him. Edgar remembered that Clare had used the very same words, and it did not make him more comfortable. But yet, an enemy to himself was of so very much less importance; in short, it mattered next to nothing. He smiled, and tried to persuade Mr. Fielding that it was so, but produced no result. “Send him away” was all the Rector would say: and it was so easy for one who had not got it to do to give such advice to Edgar, who was a man incapable of sending any stranger away who claimed his hospitality, and whose sense of that virtue was as keen as an Arab’s. He would have taken in the worst of enemies had he wanted shelter, with a foolish, young, highminded scorn of any danger. Danger! Let the fellow do his worst; let him put forth all the powers he had at his command, Edgar was not afraid. But then! when Clare was in question, the importance of the matter increased in a moment tenfold, and he could not make up his mind what to do. CHAPTER II.