ent, gave a hint that this might be his
consolation. He caught eagerly at the idea. 'I had never once thought
of that! It can't be any Spaniard out in Peru--she has too much sense.
What are you looking so funny about? What! is it nearer home? That's
it, then! Famous! It would be a capital arrangement, if that terrible
old father is conformable. What an escape I have had of him! I am
sure it is a most natural and proper preference--'

'Stop! stop, Louis, you are going too fast. I know nothing. Don't say
a word to Jem, on any account: indeed, you must not. It is all going
on very well now; but the least notion that he was observed, or that it
was his Uncle Oliver's particular wish, and there would be an end of
it.'

She was just wise enough to keep back the wishes of the other vizier,
but she had said enough to set Louis quite at his ease, and put him in
the highest spirits. He seemed to have taken out a new lease of
boyishness, and, though constrained before Mary, laughed, talked, and
played pranks, so as unconsciously to fret his father exceedingly.

Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some
signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her
brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to
supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy would do Jem
no harm. But the effect on him was to produce a fit of hearty
laughter, as he remembered poor Lord Ormersfield's unaccountable
urbanity and suppressed exultation in the morning's ride. 'I honour
the Ponsonbys,' he said, 'for not choosing to second his lordship's
endeavours to tyrannize over that poor fellow, body and soul. Poor
Louis! he is fabulously dutiful.'

But Clara, recovering from her first stupor of wonder, began scolding
him for presuming to laugh at anything so cruel to Louis. It was not
the part of a friend! And with tears of indignation and sympathy
starting from her eyes, she was pathetically certain that, though
granny and Jem were so unfeeling as to laugh, his high spirits were
only assumed to hide his suffering. 'Poor Louis! what had he not said
to her about Mary last night! Now she knew what he meant! And as to
Mary, she was glad she had never liked her, she had no patience with
her: of course, she was far too prosy and stupid to care for anything
like Louis, it was a great escape for him. It would serve her right to
marry a horrid little crooked clerk in her fath