“The house is mine!” Clare said to herself, when he was gone, with a despite which was partly the result of her mortification and grief. As if she cared for that--as if it was anything to her being mistress there, she who had been mistress of Arden! She sat down by herself in the old-fashioned, dingy drawing-room--the room which Mr. Fielding had furnished for his Milly nearly fifty years before, and where, though everything was familiar, nothing was interesting. She could not read, even though there had been anything to read. She had nothing to work at, even had she cared to work. She sat all alone, idle, unoccupied--a prey to her own thoughts. There is nothing in the world more painful than the sudden blank which falls upon an agitated spirit when thus turned out of confusion and excitement into the arbitrary quiet of a strange house--a new scene. Clare walked about the room from window to window, trying vainly to see something where there was nothing to see--the gardener rolling the grass, old Simon clamping past the Rectory gate in his clogs, upon some weird mission to the churchyard. Impatience took possession of her soul. When she had borne it as long as she could, she ran upstairs for her hat, and went across the road to the Doctor’s house, which irritated her, twinkling with all its windows in the slanting sunshine. Miss Somers could not be much consolation, but at least she would maunder and talk, and give Clare’s irritation vent in another way. The silence, the quiet, the peace, were more than she could bear. CHAPTER XXV. Miss Somers was seated very erect on her sofa when Clare went in--more erect than she had been known to be for many a day--and was at the moment engaged in a discussion with Mercy, which her visitor could not but hear. “I don’t believe it was Clare,” Miss Somers was saying; “not that I mean you are telling a story--oh, no! I should as soon think---- But Clare will break her heart. She was always so---- And if ever a brother deserved it---- Oh, the poor dear---- I don’t mean to say a word against my brother--he is very, very---- But, then, as to being feeling, and all that---- If you are never ill yourself, how are you to know? But, Edgar, oh!--the tender heartedest, feelingest---- She never, never could---- Oh, can it be--is it--Clare?” “Yes,” said Clare, with her haughtiest look. “And I think you were discussing us, Miss Somers--please don’t. I do not like it, nor would my brother. Talk of us to ourselves as you like, but to others--don’t, please.”