“Then, if you think those people have been wronged, you are not on our side, Mr. Brant?”

What to an older and more worldly man would have seemed, and probably was, only a playful reproach, struck Clarence deeply, and brought his pent-up feelings to his lips.

“You have never wronged them.  You couldn’t do it; it isn’t in your nature.  I am on your side, and for you and yours always, Mrs. Peyton.  From the first time I saw you on the plains, when I was brought, a ragged boy, before you by your husband, I think I would gladly have laid down my life for you.  I don’t mind telling you now that I was even jealous of poor Susy, so anxious was I for the smallest share in your thoughts, if only for a moment.  You could have done anything with me you wished, and I should have been happy,—­far happier than I have been ever since.  I tell you this, Mrs. Peyton, now, because you have just doubted if I might be ‘on your side,’ but I have been longing to tell it all to you before, and it is that I am ready to do anything you want,—­all you want,—­to be on your side and at your side, now and forever.”

He was so earnest and hearty, and above all so appallingly and blissfully happy, in this relief of his feelings, smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and so absurdly unconscious of his twenty-two years, his little brown curling mustache, the fire in his wistful, yearning eyes, and, above all, of his clasped hands and lover-like attitude, that Mrs. Peyton—­at first rigid as stone, then suffused to the eyes—­cast a hasty glance round the apartment, put her handkerchief to her face, and laughed like a girl.

At which Clarence, by no means discomposed, but rather accepting her emotion as perfectly natural, joined her heartily, and added:—­

“It’s so, Mrs. Peyton; I’m glad I told you.  You don’t mind it, do you?”

But Mrs. Peyton had resumed her gravity, and perhaps a touch of her previous misgivings.

“I should certainly be very sorry,” she said, looking at him critically, “to object to your sharing your old friendship for your little playmate with her parents and guardians, or to your expressing it to them as frankly as to her.”

She saw the quick change in his mobile face and the momentary arrest of its happy expression.  She was frightened and yet puzzled.  It was not the sensitiveness of a lover at the mention of the loved one’s name, and yet it suggested an uneasy consciousness.  If his previous impulsive outburst had been prompted honestly, or even artfully, by his passion for Susy, why had he looked so shocked when she spoke of her?

But Clarence, whose emotion had been caused by the sudden recall of his knowledge of Susy’s own disloyalty to the woman whose searching eyes were upon him, in his revulsion against the deceit was, for an instant, upon the point of divulging all.  Perhaps, if Mrs. Peyton had shown more confidence, he would have done so, and materially altered the evolution of this story.  But, happily, it is upon these slight human weaknesses that your romancer depends, and Clarence, with no other reason than the instinctive sympathy of youth with youth in its opposition to wisdom and experience, let the opportunity pass, and took the responsibility of it out of the hands of this chronicler.