Lyttleton mentally pronounced Clare also a fine-looking and intelligent woman. She bore a prominent part in the conversation, while Nell contented herself almost entirely with silent listening, though from neither lack of ideas nor bashfulness, as her speaking countenance and quiet ease of manner fully attested. Lyttleton wanted to draw her out, to hear her opinion on some of the controverted points, so seated himself at her side, when the dining-room had been forsaken for the parlor, and asked what she thought of the sentiments expressed by himself and others. He found she had an opinion and was able to maintain it with spirit and ability. They were still talking earnestly when Kenneth came in; so earnestly, that they were not aware of his entrance until the major pronounced his name in introducing Captain Bernard. "Dr. Clendenin." Lyttleton turned hastily at the sound and scanned the tall, manly figure and noble face with ill concealed eagerness and curiosity; then as the major named him, "Mr. Lyttleton, lately from England," rose with a slight bow, and accepted Kenneth's offered hand with a show of cordiality and a "Most happy to meet you, sir." But neither then nor afterward did he give the smallest hint of his acquaintance with Marian, or his visit to the neighborhood of Glen Forest. He had read Marian's nature, delicate, sensitive, reserved, and felt sure that she would confide to no one the secret of their solitary rambles, their stolen interviews, much less of the wooing of his looks and tones, scarcely put into plain words by his wily tongue. "I have not committed myself, did not ask her to be my wife, or even say 'I love you,'" was his inward thought; "and she would die rather than own that she had been so lightly won." Kenneth declined an invitation to be seated. "I am summoned in haste to a very sick patient," he said, "and merely stepped in, in passing, to ask Mrs. Lamar's kind offices for another who is suffering from the lack of proper nursing." "Those poor devils of country doctors have a hard life of it," remarked Lyttleton superciliously, when Kenneth had gone. "It is a noble, self-sacrificing life," replied Nell, with some hauteur, "I know of none that is more so than Dr. Clendenin's." She would not have Kenneth pitied or patronized by this insolent stranger, and she glanced with scorn at the white hands, delicate and shapely almost as a woman's, one of which was toying with the seals of a heavy gold watch chain in a way to display to advantage a brilliant gem that glittered on the little finger. They were alone at the moment, the major and his friend having followed Mrs. Lamar and Kenneth to the outer door. Lyttleton lifted his eyebrows meaningly, and with a slight expressive shrug of the shoulders: "Ah, I beg pardon, Miss Lamar! an intimate and particular friend of yours? I was not aware of it; and in fact was merely speaking of the class in general."