to Clara than in casting her off for
Lætitia? No, she had done things to set his pride throbbing in the quick. She
had gone bleeding about first to one, then to another; she had betrayed him to
Vernon, and to Mrs. Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to
him as well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that appetite
was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to his purposes.
    »I discard all idea of vengeance,« he said, and thrilled burningly to a
smart in his admiration of the man who could be so magnanimous under mortal
injury: for the more admirable he, the more pitiable. He drank a drop or two of
self-pity like a poison, repelling the assaults of public pity. Clara must be
given up. It must be seen by the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was
right. Laocoon of his own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of
attitude in the muscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara
must be given up. O bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one
whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes in his
bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the second wife of an
old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And were it publicly known
that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old Vernon for a refuge, and part
in spite, part in shame, part in desperation, part in a fit of good sense under
the circumstances, espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in its
judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of
self-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it requisite, might
be taught to think what it assuredly would not think if she should be seen
tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye. Self-preservation, not vengeance,
breathed that whisper. He glanced at her iniquity for a justification of it,
without any desire to do her a permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with
a strong intention to give her all the benefit of the scandal, supposing a
scandal, or ordinary tattle.
    »And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
opened his mouth and shut his eyes.«
    You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that he
had no desire to harm her. Some gentle