 brood on freedom.«
    »Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton ...!«
    »What of them?«
    »They're feeling too much alone.«
    She could not combat the remark: by her self-assurance that she had the
principle of faithfulness, she acknowledged to herself the truth of it: - there
is no freedom for the weak! Vernon had said that once. She tried to resist the
weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated her into a sense of pitiful
dependence.
    Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be
traversing in the society of a closely-scanning reader of fair faces.
Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park.
    »Shall I leave you?« said De Craye.
    »Why should you?« she replied.
    He bent to her gracefully.
    The mild subservience flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled her to
be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she
acquiesced to his observation: »An anticipatory story is a trap to the teller.«
    »It is,« she said. She had been thinking as much.
    He threw up his head to consult the brain comically with a dozen little
blinks.
    »No, you are right, Miss Middleton, inventing before-hand never prospers;
'tis a way to trip our own cleverness. Truth and mother-wit are the best
counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up to the character you
assign me.«
    Some tangle, more prospective than present, seemed to be about her as she
reflected. But her intention being to speak to Willoughby without subterfuge,
she was grateful to her companion for not tempting her to swerve. No one could
doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was in the humour both to admire
and adopt the art, so she was glad to be rescued from herself. How mother-wit
was to second truth, she did not inquire, and as she did not happen to be
thinking of Crossjay, she was not troubled by having to consider how truth and
his tale of the morning would be likely to harmonize.
    Driving down the park she had full occupation in questioning whether her
return would be pleasing to Vernon, who was the virtual cause of it, though he
had done so little to promote it: so little that she really doubted his pleasure
in seeing her return.
 

                                  Chapter XXIX

In which the Sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby Is Explained: and He Receives Much
                                  Instruction

The Hall-clock over the
