At this moment tea was brought in, and Clavering sat for a time silent with his cup in his hand.  She, the meanwhile, had resumed the old position with her face upon her hands, which she had abandoned when the servant entered the room, and was now sitting looking at him as he sipped his tea with his eyes averted from her.  “I cannot understand,” at last he said, “why you should persist in your intimacy with such a woman.”

“You have not thought about it, Harry, or you would understand it.  It is, I think, very easily understood.”

“You know her to be treacherous, false, vulgar, covetous, unprincipled.  You cannot like her.  You say she is a dragon.”

“A dragon to you, I said.”

“You cannot pretend that she is a lady, and yet you put up with her society.”

“Exactly.  And now tell me what you would have me do.”

“I would have you part from her.”

“But how?  It is so easy to say, part.  Am I to bar my door against her when she has given me no offence?  Am I to forget that she did me great service, when I sorely needed such services?  Can I tell her to her face that she is all these things that you say of her, and that therefore I will for the future dispense with her company?  Or do you believe that people in this world associate only with those they love and esteem?”

“I would not have one for my intimate friend whom I did not love and esteem.”

“But, Harry, suppose that no one loved and esteemed you; that you had no home down at Clavering with a father that admires you and a mother that worships you; no sisters that think you to be almost perfect, no comrades with whom you can work with mutual regard and emulation, no self-confidence, no high hopes of your own, no power of choosing companions whom you can esteem and love—­suppose with you it was Sophie Gordeloup or none—­how would it be with you then?”

His heart must have been made of stone if this had not melted it.  He got up, and coming round to her, stood over her.  “Julia,” he said, “it is not so with you.”

“But it is so with Julia,” she said.  “That is the truth.  How am I better than she, and why should I not associate with her?”

“Better than she!  As women you are poles asunder.”

“But as dragons,” she said, smiling, “we come together.”

“Do you mean that you have no one to love you?”

“Yes, Harry; that is just what I do mean.  I have none to love me.  In playing my cards, I have won my stakes in money and rank, but have lost the amount ten times told in affection, friendship, and that general unpronounced esteem which creates the fellowship of men and women in the world.  I have a carriage and horses, and am driven about with grand servants; and people, as they see me, whisper and say that is Lady Ongar, whom nobody knows.  I can see it in their eyes till I fancy that I can hear their words.”

“But it is all false.”