"That one of my blood should be so debased!" he cried, brushing angrily at his face. "Unhappy! I beg you to feel for yourself, Clare. But I suppose," and he said it scornfully, "girls don't feel this sort of shame." She grew a trifle paler. "Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard." "Have you no will of your own?" he exclaimed. She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he detested in her. "No, I believe you have none!" he added. "And what can I do? I can't step forward and stop this accursed marriage. If you would but say a word I would save you; but you tie my hands. And they expect me to stand by and see it done!" "Will you not be there, Richard?" said Clare, following the question with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that had so thrilled him on his marriage morn. "Oh, my darling Clare!" he cried in the kindest way he had ever used to her, "if you knew how I feel this!" and now as he wept she wept, and came insensibly into his arms. "My darling Clare!" he repeated. She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping. "You _will_ do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So lovely as you are, too!... Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to you, and tell you all.... Look up. Can you still consent?" "I must not disobey mama," Clare murmured, without looking up from the nest her cheek had made on his bosom. "Then kiss me for the last time," said Richard. "I'll never kiss you after it, Clare." He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly round him, and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips, shutting her eyes, her face suffused with a burning red. Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses. Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a stone wall. To her indeed the young married hero spoke almost indecorously, and that which his delicacy withheld him from speaking to Clare. He could provoke nothing more responsive from the practical animal than "Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!" "Really," Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, "that boy's education acts like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything sensibly. He is for ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come to at last heaven only knows! I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear it." Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not very well worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical controversy, as it were, with her brother. Doubtless she did trust he would be able to bear his sorrows to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can barely help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophesied much grief to the baronet.