The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served two purposes: it preserved her from brooding on the humiliation of her lame flight, and flutter back, and it quieted her mind in regard to the precipitate intimacy of her relations with Colonel De Craye. Willoughby's boast of his implacable character was to blame. She was at war with him, and she was compelled to put the case in that light. Crossjay must be shielded from one who could not spare an offender, so Colonel De Craye quite naturally was called on for his help, and the colonel's dexterous aid appeared to her more admirable than alarming. Nevertheless, she would not have answered a direct question falsely. She was for the fib, but not the lie; at a word she could be disdainful of subterfuges. Her look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She had written him a letter of three lines: "There were but three": and she had destroyed the letter. Something perchance was repented by her? Then she had done him an injury! Between his wrath at the suspicion of an injury, and the prudence enjoined by his abject coveting of her, he consented to be fooled for the sake of vengeance, and something besides. "Well! here you are, safe; I have you!" said he, with courtly exultation: "and that is better than your handwriting. I have been all over the country after you." "Why did you? We are not in a barbarous land," said Clara. "Crossjay talks of your visiting a sick child, my love:--you have changed your dress?" "You see." "The boy declared you were going to that farm of Hoppner's, and some cottage. I met at my gates a tramping vagabond who swore to seeing you and the boy in a totally contrary direction." "Did you give him money?" "I fancy so." "Then he was paid for having seen me." Willoughby tossed his head: it might be as she suggested; beggars are liars. "But who sheltered you, my dear Clara? You had not been heard of at Hoppner's." "The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them more would be to spoil them. You disperse money too liberally. There was no fever in the place. Who could have anticipated such a downpour! I want to consult Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think of wearing at Mrs Mountstuart's to-night." "Do. She is unerring." "She has excellent taste." "She dresses very simply herself." "But it becomes her. She is one of the few women whom I feel I could not improve with a touch." "She has judgement." He reflected and repeated his encomium. The shadow of a dimple in Clara's cheek awakened him to the idea that she had struck him somewhere: and certainly he would never again be able to put up the fiction of her jealousy of Laetitia. What, then, could be this girl's motive for praying to be released? The interrogation humbled him: he fled from the answer.