«
    »She declines? Add my petition, I beg.«
    »To all? or to her?«
    »Do all the bridesmaids decline?«
    »The scene is too ghastly.«
    »A marriage?«
    »Girls have grown sick of it.«
    »Of weddings? We'll overcome the sickness.«
    »With some.«
    »Not with Miss Darleton? You tempt my eloquence.«
    »You wish it?«
    »To win her consent? Certainly.«
    »The scene!«
    »Do I wish that?«
    »Marriage!« exclaimed Clara, dashing into the ford, fearful of her
ungovernable wildness and of what it might have kindled. - You, father! you have
driven me to unmaidenliness! - She forgot Willoughby in her father, who would
not quit a comfortable house for her all but prostrate beseeching; would not
bend his mind to her explanations, answered her with the horrid iteration of
such deaf misunderstanding as may be associated with a tolling bell.
    De Craye allowed her to catch Crossjay by herself. They entered a narrow
lane, mysterious with possible birds' eggs in the May-green hedges. As there was
not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the rearguard, and was consoled
by having Miss Middleton's figure to contemplate; but the readiness of her
joining in Crossjay's pastime of the nest-hunt was not so pleasing to a man that
she had wound to a pitch of excitement. Her scornful accent on Marriage rang
through him. Apparently she was beginning to do with him just as she liked,
herself entirely unconcerned.
    She kept Crossjay beside her till she dismounted, and the colonel was left
to the procession of elephantine ideas in his head, whose ponderousness he took
for natural weight. We do not with impunity abandon the initiative. Men who have
yielded it are like cavalry put on the defensive; a very small force with an
ictus will scatter them.
    Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the dimensions of his ideas to a
practical standard.
    Two ideas were opposed like duellists bent on the slaughter of one another.
Either she amazed him by confirming the suspicions he had gathered of her
sentiments for Willoughby in the moments of his introduction to her; or she
amazed him as a model for coquettes: - the married and the widowed might apply
to her for lessons.
    These combatants exchanged shots, but remained standing: the encounter was
undecided. Whatever the result, no person so seductive as Clara Middleton had he
ever met. Her cry of loathing: »Marriage!« coming from a girl, rang
