The boy raised a shout and scampered away to Sir Willoughby, at the appearance of whom Clara felt herself nipped and curling inward. Crossjay ran up to him with every sign of pleasure. Yet he had not mentioned him during the walk; and Clara took it for a sign that the boy understood the entire satisfaction Willoughby had in mere shows of affection, and acted up to it. Hardly blaming Crossjay, she was a critic of the scene, for the reason that youthful creatures who have ceased to love a person, hunger for evidence against him to confirm their hard animus, which will seem to them sometimes, when he is not immediately irritating them, brutish, because they can not analyze it and reduce it to the multitude of just antagonisms whereof it came. It has passed by large accumulation into a sombre and speechless load upon the senses, and fresh evidence, the smallest item, is a champion to speak for it. Being about to do wrong, she grasped at this eagerly, and brooded on the little of vital and truthful that there was in the man and how he corrupted the boy. Nevertheless, she instinctively imitated Crossjay in an almost sparkling salute to him. "Good-morning, Willoughby; it was not a morning to lose: have you been out long?" He retained her hand. "My dear Clara! and you, have you not overfatigued yourself? Where have you been?" "Round--everywhere! And I am certainly not tired." "Only you and Crossjay? You should have loosened the dogs." "Their barking would have annoyed the house." "Less than I am annoyed to think of you without protection." He kissed her fingers: it was a loving speech. "The household . . ." said Clara, but would not insist to convict him of what he could not have perceived. "If you outstrip me another morning, Clara, promise me to take the dogs; will you?" "Yes." "To-day I am altogether yours." "Are you?" "From the first to the last hour of it!--So you fall in with Horace's humour pleasantly?" "He is very amusing." "As good as though one had hired him." "Here comes Colonel De Craye." "He must think we have hired him!" She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's tone. He sang out a good-morning to De Craye, and remarked that he must go to the stables. "Darleton? Darleton, Miss Middleton?" said the colonel, rising from his bow to her: "a daughter of General Darleton? If so, I have had the honour to dance with her. And have not you?--practised with her, I mean; or gone off in a triumph to dance it out as young ladies do? So you know what a delightful partner she is." "She is!" cried Clara, enthusiastic for her succouring friend, whose letter was the treasure in her bosom. "Oddly, the name did not strike me yesterday, Miss Middleton. In the middle of the night it rang a little silver bell in my ear, and I remembered the lady I was half in love with, if only for her dancing. She is dark, of your height, as light on her feet; a sister in another colour. Now that I know her to be your friend . . . !"