She paused for a moment, lingering on the steps, and gave a wistful look round her, hoping, she said to herself, that she would see nobody--but rather, poor Clare, with a wistful longing to see some one--to have her path intercepted. But no one was visible. Edgar was still in the library with Mr. Fazakerly. Arthur Arden was--no one knew where. The whole world stood afar off, still and indifferent, letting her do what she pleased, letting her leave her father’s house. She stood on the doorstep, with nobody but Wilkins in sight, and took leave of the place where she was born. Had she been called upon to leave it under any other circumstances, her whole mind would have been occupied by the pang of parting from Arden. Now Arden had the lightest possible share in her pain--so little that she scarcely remembered it. She had so many more serious matters to grieve over. She forgot even, to tell the truth, that she was leaving Arden. She looked round, not to take farewell of her home, but to see if there was no shadow anywhere of some one coming, or some one going. She looked all round, deep into the shade of the trees, far across the glimmer of the fish pond. All was silent, deserted, lonely. The moment had come when she must step forth from the shelter in which she had spent all her life. The avenue sloped gently downward to the village, and yet Clare felt it as hard as a mountainside. She seemed to herself to be toiling along, spending all her strength. For she was so solitary--no one to lend her an arm or a hand; no one to comfort her, or even to say the way was long. She was (she believed) a scorned and forsaken woman. Heaven and earth were made bitter to her by the thought. Once more she looked round, a final double farewell. He might even have been roused, she thought, by the sound of her step crossing the hall, by Wilkins swinging open the door for her, as he always did when any Arden went or came; for others, for the common world, it was open enough, as it stood usually at half its width. Oh, how slight a noise would have roused her, how faint a sound, had it been Arthur who was going away! She bethought herself of an expedient she had heard of--swallowing her own pride in the vehemence of her feelings. She wished for him with all her heart, making a vehement conscious exertion of her will. She cried out within herself, Arthur! Arthur! Arthur! It was a kind of Pagan prayer, addressed not to God, but to man. Such a thing had been known to be effectual. She had read in books, she had heard from others, that such an appeal made, with all the heart, is never unsuccessful; that the one will thus exerted affects the other unerringly; and that the name thus called sounds in the ears of its owner, calling him, wherever he may be. Therefore she did it, and watched its effect with a smothered excitement not to be described. But there was no effect; the park spread out behind her, the avenue ran into two lines of living green before.