had closed in the morning to keep out the sun. To keep out the sun! would the sunshine ever come in again? She locked up the bureau slowly, and went wandering out, not knowing where she went. Sunshine and light had departed from Arden. Was it for evermore? CHAPTER XVII. Clare’s condemnation of her cousin was, of course, unjust. He had not done anything to deserve so harsh a judgment. At least, what he had really done to deserve it was unknown to her. He had not attempted to deceive her in that special point. His note was true to the letter: the fault he had committed was but of two minutes’ duration, and was simply the result of a sudden temptation, which probably he would have avoided had he been at all prepared for it--avoided, be it understood, not out of any distaste for the pleasant folly, but for prudential motives. But he had not been prepared for it; and he had seen a pretty, defenceless creature in his way, poor enough and of sufficiently small consideration to have violent pseudo-love made to her, and an attempt at least at familiarity; and he had not been able to resist the opportunity. Arthur Arden would not have ventured to address Jeanie so had she been even Perfitt’s daughter. He was not cowardly in the ordinary sense of the word; but there was so much of the craven in him, as in most men moved by similar impulses, that his passions were only irrestrainable when the object of them could be safely assailed. Even with all this, and allowing that could he have done it he would have tried his best to make a victim of Jeanie, still there had not been time enough, nor opportunity enough, to raise any such purpose seriously in his mind. When he spoke to her, he only half meant, or perhaps did not mean at all, what he said. It was mere levity and spontaneous, instinctive, not intentional, wickedness. How far this would have mended matters with a really just critic I will not pretend to ask; but it would have mended matters with Clare. She, however, had formed a very different opinion of the whole transaction. It was most serious, and full of elaborate plan and purpose in her eyes--the basest purpose of which man could be guilty, and the most mortifying to herself. She made the fact which Perfitt had disclosed to her into a whole drama of evil intention. She did not know in what self-denial her kinsman had spent the morning, in what self-sacrifice he was about to spend the afternoon. She did not know how much he was suffering in order chiefly to prolong his stay in her neighbourhood. It is true that his other sins richly deserved the condemnation she had pronounced. He was employing her as a shield, while he attempted to do the greatest possible injury to her brother. He was plotting secretly under her protection and in her very shadow against the honour and good fame of the family, and even against herself personally; for her own fortune was involved in Edgar’s, so far, at least, as Old Arden was concerned.