"Nay, nay, but let us go fair and softly," said her brother. "You are not to refuse him before he asks the question." "Certainly," said Clara; "but I well know how to manage that--he shall never ask the question at all. I will restore Lady Binks's admirer, without accepting so much as a civility in ransom." "Worse and worse, Clara," answered Mowbray; "you are to remember he is my friend and guest, and he must not be affronted in my house. Leave things to themselves.--Besides, consider an instant, Clara--had you not better take a little time for reflection in this case? The offer is a splendid one--title--fortune--and, what is more, a fortune which you will be well entitled to share largely in." "This is beyond our implied treaty," said Clara. "I have yielded more than ever I thought I should have done, when I agreed that this Earl should be introduced to me on the footing of a common visitor; and now you talk favourably of his pretensions. This is an encroachment, Mowbray, and now I shall relapse into my obstinacy, and refuse to see him at all." "Do as you will," replied Mowbray, sensible that it was only by working on her affections that he had any chance of carrying a point against her inclination,--"Do as you will, my dear Clara; but, for Heaven's sake, wipe your eyes." "And behave myself," said she, trying to smile as she obeyed him,--"behave myself, you would say, like folks of this world; but the quotation is lost on you, who never read either Prior or Shakspeare." "I thank Heaven for that," said Mowbray. "I have enough to burden my brain, without carrying such a lumber of rhymes in it as you and Lady Pen do.--Come, that is right; go to the mirror, and make yourself decent." A woman must be much borne down indeed by pain and suffering, when she loses all respect for her external appearance. The madwoman in Bedlam wears her garland of straw with a certain air of pretension; and we have seen a widow whom we knew to be most sincerely affected by a recent deprivation, whose weeds, nevertheless, were arranged with a dolorous degree of grace, which amounted almost to coquetry. Clara Mowbray had also, negligent as she seemed to be of appearances, her own art of the toilet, although of the most rapid and most simple character. She took off her little riding-hat, and, unbinding a lace of Indian gold which retained her locks, shook them in dark and glossy profusion over her very handsome form, which they overshadowed down to her slender waist; and while her brother stood looking on her with a mixture of pride, affection, and compassion, she arranged them with a large comb, and, without the assistance of any _femme d'atours_, wove them, in the course of a few minutes, into such a natural head-dress as we see on the statues of the Grecian nymphs. "Now let me but find my best muff," she said, "come prince and peer, I shall be ready to receive them."