His immediate deference made her regretful. "There is hardly time, Willoughby." "My dear, we shall have to express our thanks to her." "I cannot." His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged to be silent. Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining them in the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy indication of halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread of junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's nerves by contact, with a frame labouring for breath. De Craye looked on them from overhead. The carriages were at the door, and Willoughby said, "Where's Horace? I suppose he's taking a final shot at his Book of Anecdotes and neat collection of Irishisms." "No," replied the colonel, descending. "That's a spring works of itself and has discovered the secret of continuous motion, more's the pity!--unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to Science." He gave a laugh of good-humour. "Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit." Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip. "'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy," said De Craye. "Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one for the property." "Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour, Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug." "If he means to be musical, let him keep time." "Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept in the art of being gracefully vanquished, and so winning tender hearts. Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was a suspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly without an assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of him; and it filled him with venom for a further bout at the next opportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he had shown Clara what he could do in a way of speaking different from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble protestations to which, he knew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of his race, that blunt personalities, or the pugilistic form, administered directly on the salient features, are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters, he felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. De Craye was in the first carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby, with Clara, Laetitia, and Dr. Middleton, followed, all silent, for the Rev. Doctor was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby was damped a little when he unlocked his mouth to say: