, you are! Understand my nature rightly, and you ...«
    »I do! I do!« interposed Clara: »if I did not by this time I should be
idiotic. Let me assure you, I understand it. Oh! listen to me: one moment. Miss
Dale regards me as the happiest woman on earth. Willoughby, if I possessed her
good qualities, her heart and mind, no doubt I should be. It is my wish - you
must hear me, hear me out - my wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish
to make way for her. She appreciates you: I do not - to my shame, I do not. She
worships you: I do not, I cannot. You are the rising sun to her. It has been so
for years. No one can account for love: I daresay not for the impossibility of
loving ... loving where we should; all love bewilders me. I was not created to
understand it. But she loves you, she has pined. I believe it has destroyed the
health you demand as one item in your list. But you, Willoughby, can restore
that. Travelling, and ... and your society, the pleasure of your society would
certainly restore it. You look so handsome together! She has unbounded devotion:
as for me I cannot idolize. I see faults; I see them daily. They astonish and
wound me. Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all by your
wife. You warned me to beware - that is, you said, you said something.«
    Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to cover her slip of the tongue.
    Sir Willoughby struck in: »And when I say that the entire concatenation is
based on an erroneous observation of facts, and an erroneous deduction from that
erroneous observation! -? No, no. Have confidence in me. I propose it to you in
this instance, purely to save you from deception. You are cold, my love? you
shivered.«
    »I am not cold,« said Clara. »Some one, I suppose, was walking over my
grave.«
    The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing under
the curled ridge.
    She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by.
    »Your grave!« he exclaimed over her head; »my own girl!«
    »Is not the orchis naturally a stranger in ground so far away from the
chalk, Willoughby?«
    »I am incompetent to