"Miss Middleton, when I first had the honour of looking on you, it was in a posture that necessitated my looking up, and morally so it has been since. I conceived that Willoughby had won the greatest prize of earth. And next I was led to the conclusion that he had won it to lose it. Whether he much cares, is the mystery I haven't leisure to fathom. Himself is the principal consideration with himself, and ever was."
"You discovered it!" said Clara.
"He uncovered it," said De Craye. "The miracle was, that the world wouldn't see. But the world is a piggy-wiggy world for the wealthy fellow who fills a trough for it, and that he has always very sagaciously done. Only women besides myself have detected him. I have never exposed him; I have been an observer pure and simple; and because I apprehended another catastrophe--making something like the fourth, to my knowledge, one being public . . ."
"You knew Miss Durham?"
"And Harry Oxford too. And they're a pair as happy as blackbirds in a cherry-tree, in a summer sunrise, with the owner of the garden asleep. Because of that apprehension of mine, I refused the office of best man till Willoughby had sent me a third letter. He insisted on my coming. I came, saw, and was conquered. I trust with all my soul I did not betray myself, I owed that duty to my position of concealing it. As for entirely hiding that I had used my eyes, I can't say: they must answer for it."
The colonel was using his eyes with an increasing suavity that threatened more than sweetness.
"I believe you have been sincerely kind," said Clara. "We will descend to the path round the lake."
She did not refuse her hand on the descent, and he let it escape the moment the service was done. As he was performing the admirable character of the man of honour, he had to attend to the observance of details; and sure of her though he was beginning to feel, there was a touch of the unknown in Clara Middleton which made him fear to stamp assurance; despite a barely resistible impulse, coming of his emotions and approved by his maxims. He looked at the hand, now a free lady's hand. Willoughby settled, his chance was great. Who else was in the way? No one. He counselled himself to wait for her; she might have ideas of delicacy. Her face was troubled, speculative; the brows clouded, the lips compressed.
"You have not heard this from Miss Dale?" she said.
"Last night they were together: this morning she fled. I saw her this morning distressed. She is unwilling to send you a message: she talks vaguely of meeting you some days hence. And it is not the first time he has gone to her for his consolation."
"That is not a proposal," Clara reflected. "He is too prudent. He did not propose to her at the time you mention. Have you not been hasty, Colonel De Craye?"
Shadows crossed her forehead. She glanced in the direction of the house and stopped her walk.
"Last night, Miss Middleton, there was a listener."
"Who?"
"Crossjay was under that pretty silk coverlet worked by the Miss Patternes. He came home late, found his door locked, and dashed downstairs into the drawing-room, where he snuggled up and dropped asleep. The two speakers woke him; they frightened the poor dear lad in his love for you, and after they had gone, he wanted to run out of the house, and I met him just after I had come back from my search, bursting, and took him to my room, and laid him on the sofa, and abused him for not lying quiet. He was restless as a fish on a bank. When I woke in the morning he was off. Doctor Corney came across him somewhere on the road and drove him to the cottage. I was ringing the bell. Corney told me the boy had you on his brain, and was miserable, so Crossjay and I had a talk."
"Crossjay did not repeat to you the conversation he had heard?" said Clara.
"No."
She smiled rejoicingly, proud of the boy. as she walked on.
"But you'll pardon me, Miss Middleton--and I'm for him as much as you are--if I was guilty of a little angling."
"My sympathies are with the fish."
"The poor fellow had a secret that hurt him. It rose to the surface crying to be hooked, and I spared him twice or thrice, because he had a sort of holy sentiment I respected, that none but Mr. Whitford ought to be his father confessor."
"Crossjay!" she cried, hugging her love of the boy.
"The secret was one not to be communicated to Miss Dale of all people."
"He said that?"
"As good as the very words. She informed me, too, that she couldn't induce him to face her straight."
"Oh, that looks like it. And Crossjay was unhappy? Very unhappy?"
"He was just where tears are on the brim, and would have been over, if he were not such a manly youngster."
"It looks..." She reverted in thought to Willoughby, and doubted, and blindly stretched hands to her recollection of the strange old monster she had discovered in him. Such a man could do anything.
That conclusion fortified her to pursue her walk to the house and give battle for freedom. Willoughby appeared to her scarce human, unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to put faith in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when we are attacked by real prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared. She conversed with De Craye of the polite and the political world, throwing off her personal burden completely, and charming him.
At the edge of the garden, on the bridge that crossed the haha from the park, he had a second impulse, almost a warning within, to seize his heavenly opportunity to ask for thanks and move her tender lowered eyelids to hint at his reward. He repressed it, doubtful of the wisdom.
Something like "heaven forgive me" was in Clara's mind, though she would have declared herself innocent before the scrutator.
