Her face was in a glow, and one glance at it set Florimel’s in a flame. She rose without a word, but with a look of mingled confusion and offence, and walked away. Clementina gathered her work together. But ere she followed her, she turned to Malcolm, looked him calmly in the face, and said, “No one can blame you for hating such a man.” “Indeed, my lady, but some one would--the only one for whose praise or blame we ought to care more than a straw or two. He tells us we are neither to judge nor to hate. But--” “I cannot stay and talk with you,” said Clementina. “You must pardon me if I follow your mistress.” Another moment and he would have told her all, in the hope of her warning Florimel. But she was gone. CHAPTER XLV. THE RIDE HOME. Florimel was offended with Malcolm: he had put her confidence in him to shame, speaking of things to which he ought not once to have even alluded. But Clementina was not only older than Florimel, but in her loving endeavours for her kind, had heard many a pitiful story, and was now saddened by the tale, not shocked at the teller. Indeed, Malcolm’s mode of acquainting her with the grounds of the feeling she had challenged pleased both her heart and her sense of what was becoming; while, as a partisan of women, finding a man also of their part, she was ready to offer him the gratitude of all womankind--in her one typical self. “What a rough diamond is here!” she thought. “Rough!” echoed her heart: “how is he rough? What fault could the most fastidious find with his manners? True, he speaks as a servant --and where would be his manners if he did not? But neither in tone, expression, nor way of thinking, is he in the smallest degree servile. He is like a great pearl, clean out of the sea--bred, it is true, in the midst of strange surroundings, but pure as the moonlight; and if a man, so environed, yet has grown so grand, what might he not become with such privileges as----!”