‘Well,’ replied Clara.

‘What have you got to tell?  Do tell me what you have to tell.’

‘I have nothing to tell.’

’Clara, that is impossible.  Have you seen him?  I know you have seen him, because he went by from the house about an hour since.’

‘Oh yes; I have seen him.’

‘And what have you said to him?’

’Pray do not ask me these questions just now.  I have got to think of it all to think what he did say and what I said.’

‘But you will tell me.’

‘Yes; I suppose so.’  Then Mrs Askerton was silent on the subject for the remainder of the day, allowing Clara even to go to bed without another question.  And nothing was asked on the following morning nothing till the usual time for the writing of letters.

‘Shall you have anything for the post?’ said Mrs Askerton.

‘There is plenty of time yet.’

’Not too much if you mean to go out at all.  Come, Clara, you had better write to him at once.’

‘Write to whom?  I don’t know that I have any letter to write at all.’  Then there was a pause.  ‘As far as I can see,’ she said, ’I may give up writing altogether for the future, unless some day you may care to hear from me.’

‘But you are not going away.’

’Not just yet if you will keep me.  To tell you the truth, Mrs Askerton, I do not yet know where on earth to take myself.’

‘Wait here till we turn you out.’

’I have got to put my house in order.  You know what I mean.  The job ought not to be a troublesome one, for it is a very small house.’

‘I suppose I know what you mean.’

’It will not be a very smart establishment.  But I must look it all in the face; must I not?  Though it were to be no house at all, I cannot stay here all my life.’

’Yes, you may.  You have lost Aylmer Park because you were too noble not to come to us.’

‘No,’ said Clara, speaking aloud, with bright eyes almost with her hands clenched.  ‘No I deny that.’

’I shall choose to think so for my own purposes.  Clara, you are savage to me almost always savage; but next to him I love you better than all the world beside.  And so does he.  “It’s her courage,” he said to me the other day.  “That she should dare to do as she pleases here, is nothing; but to have dared to persevere in the fangs of that old dragon,” it was just what he said “that was wonderful!"’

‘There is an end of the old dragon now, so far as I am concerned.’

’Of course there is and of the young dragon too.  You wouldn’t have had the heart to keep me in suspense if you had accepted him again.  You couldn’t have been so pleasant last night if that had been so.’

‘I did not know I was very pleasant.’

’Yes, you were.  You were soft and gracious gracious for you, at least.  And now, dear, do tell me about it.  Of course I am dying to know.’

‘There is nothing to tell.’