"Yes; in Purgatory--with an angel by me. My report of the place will be favourable. Good angel, I have yet to say something."
"Say it, and expiate."
"I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially to-day ... properly I ought not to have had any idea: but his coming to me, and his not doing as another would have done, seemed ... A gentleman of real nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him by. I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did tell me more: if a nature like mine could only have had faith without bearing the rattle of a tongue.
A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks. Laetitia rose as Vernon entered.
"I am just going to my father for a few minutes," she said.
"And I have just come from yours." Vernon said to Clara. She observed a very threatening expression in him. The sprite of contrariety mounted to her brain to indemnify her for her recent self-abasement. Seeing the bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said: "And of course papa has gone to bed"; implying, "otherwise . . ."
"Yes, he has gone. He wished me well."
"His formula of good-night would embrace that wish."
"And failing, it will be good-night for good to me!"
Clara's breathing gave a little leap. "We leave early tomorrow.
"I know. I have an appointment at Bregenz for June."
"So soon? With papa?"
"And from there we break into Tyrol, and round away to the right, Southward."
"To the Italian Alps! And was it assumed that I should be of this expedition?"
"Your father speaks dubiously."
"You have spoken of me, then?"
"I ventured to speak of you. I am not over-bold, as you know."
Her lovely eyes troubled the lids to hide their softness.
"Papa should not think of my presence with him dubiously."
"He leaves it to you to decide."
"Yes, then: many times: all that can be uttered."
"Do you consider what you are saying?"
"Mr. Whitford, I shut my eyes and say Yes."
"Beware. I give you one warning. If you shut your eyes . . ."
"Of course," she flew from him, "big mountains must be satisfied with my admiration at their feet."
"That will do for a beginning."
"They speak encouragingly."
"One of them." Vernon's breast heaved high.
"To be at your feet makes a mountain of you?" said she.
"With the heart of a mouse if that satisfies me!"
"You tower too high; you are inaccessible."
"I give you a second warning. You may he seized and lifted."
"Some one would stoop, then."
"To plant you like the flag on the conquered peak!"
"You have indeed been talking to papa, Mr. Whitford."
Vernon changed his tone.
"Shall I tell you what he said?"
"I know his language so well."
"He said--"
"But you have acted on it?"
"Only partly. He said--"
"You will teach me nothing."
"He said . . ."
"Vernon, no! oh! not in this house!"
That supplication coupled with his name confessed the end to which her quick vision perceived she was being led, where she would succumb.
She revived the same shrinking in him from a breath of their great word yet: not here; somewhere in the shadow of the mountains.
But he was sure of her. And their hands might join. The two hands thought so, or did not think, behaved like innocents.
The spirit of Dr. Middleton, as Clara felt, had been blown into Vernon, rewarding him for forthright outspeaking. Over their books, Vernon had abruptly shut up a volume and related the tale of the house. "Has this man a spice of religion in him?" the Rev.
Doctor asked midway. Vernon made out a fair general case for his cousin in that respect. "The complemental dot on his i of a commonly civilized human creature!" said Dr. Middleton, looking at his watch and finding it too late to leave the house before morning. The risky communication was to come. Vernon was proceeding with the narrative of Willoughby's generous plan when Dr. Middleton electrified him by calling out: "He whom of all men living I should desire my daughter to espouse!" and Willoughby rose in the Rev. Doctor's esteem: he praised that sensibly minded gentleman, who could acquiesce in the turn of mood of a little maid, albeit Fortune had withheld from him a taste of the switch at school. The father of the little maid's appreciation of her volatility was exhibited in his exhortation to Vernon to be off to her at once with his authority to finish her moods and assure him of peace in the morning. Vernon hesitated. Dr. Middleton remarked upon being not so sure that it was not he who had done the mischief. Thereupon Vernon, to prove his honesty, made his own story bare. "Go to her," said Dr. Middleton. Vernon proposed a meeting in Switzerland, to which Dr. Middleton assented, adding:
"Go to her": and as he appeared a total stranger to the decorum of the situation, Vernon put his delicacy aside, and taking his heart up, obeyed. He too had pondered on Clara's consent to meet him after she knew of Willoughby's terms, and her grave sweet manner during the ramble over the park. Her father's breath had been blown into him; so now, with nothing but the faith lying in sensation to convince him of his happy fortune (and how unconvincing that may be until the mind has grasped and stamped it, we experience even then when we acknowledge that we are most blessed), he held her hand. And if it was hard for him, for both, but harder for the man, to restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven when the cage stood open and nature beckoned, he was practised in self-mastery, and she loved him the more.
Laetitia was a witness of their union of hands on her coming back to the room.
They promised to visit her very early in the morning, neither of them conceiving that they left her to a night of storm and tears.
She sat meditating on Clara's present appreciation of Sir Willoughby's generosity.
