’He is my brother.  He has the only right to me.  If I must choose between him and my uncle, he must be mine—­mine.’

’You have not to choose between him and your uncle.  You have to choose between right and wrong, between his frenzy and his true good.’

‘My brother! my brother!  I go with my brother!’ was still her vehement cry.  Without listening to her cousin’s last words, she made a gesture to put him aside, and rose to hurry to her brother.

But Louis stood before her, and spoke gravely.  ’Very well.  Yield yourself to his management.  Go back to be another burden upon a household, poor enough already to sour him with cares.  Let him tell your uncle that both his brother’s children loathe the fruit of the self-sacrifice of a lifetime.  Transgress your grandmother’s wishes; condemn that poor man to a desolate, objectless, covetous old age; make the breach irreconcilable for ever; and will James be the better or the happier for your allowing his evil temper the full swing?’

Clara wrung her hands.  ’My uncle!  Yes, what shall I do with my uncle?  If I could only have them both?’

’This way you would have neither.  Keep the straight path, and you may end in having both.’

’Straight—­I don’t know what straight is!  It must be right to cling to my own brother in his noble poverty.  Oh! that he should imagine me caring for this horrid, horrid state and grandeur!’

Louis recurred to the old argument, that James did not know what he was saying, and recalled her to the remembrance of what she had felt to be the right course before James’s ebullition.  She owned it most reluctantly; but oh! she said, would James still forgive her, and not believe such dreadful things, but trust and be patient with her, and perhaps Uncle Oliver might after all be set on going to Peru, and beyond remonstrance.  Then it would all come right—­no, not right, for granny had dreaded his going.  Confused and distressed by the conflicting claims, Clara was thankful for the present respite given to her by Louis’s promise that his father should sound her uncle as to his wishes and intentions.  Lord Ormersfield’s upright, unimpassioned judgment appeared like a sort of refuge from the conflict of the various claims, and he was besides in a degree, her guardian, being the sole executor of the only will which Mrs. Frost had ever made, soon after the orphans came under her charge, giving the Terrace to James, and dividing the money in the Funds between the two.

Weeping, but not unhopeful—­convinced, though not acknowledging it-inly praying for strength and patience, and hungering for one kind word from James—­Clara quitted that almost brother, in whose counsel he had constrained her to seek relief, and went to her own chamber, there to throw herself on the guidance of that Friend, who sticketh closer than a brother.

The remaining part of the day passed quietly.  James did not consciously make any difference in his manner, meaning to be still affectionate, though disappointed, and pitying her mistake, both as to her present happiness and future good.