of your men who entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have
never conquered one: or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret
history; and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, his
nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be annoying.
He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his
master a lecture: he was quite equal to a philippic upon woman's rights. This
man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women. He was an
example of the consequence!
    Another result was, that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's
wrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal of a
colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his
loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet consciously
begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the house, from Clara and De
Craye to Lætitia and young Crossjay, down to Barclay the maid. His blind
sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when plucked from his own
web and set in the centre of another's. Lætitia looked her share in the mystery.
A burden was on her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of the
circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy, it might
be: he thought so with some gentle pity for her - of the paternal pat-back order
of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not decreed
that he should find consolation in adoring her. Nor could the temptings of
prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover
as the incurring of Lætitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked
that impulse also, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by Lætitia seemed
an upsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise the
discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the beacon,
her the bird: she was really the last person to whom he could unbosom. The idea
of his being in a position that suggested his doing so, thrilled him with fits
of rage; and it appalled him. There appeared to be another Power. The same which
had humiliated him once was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence,
whose favourite he had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for
discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had singled