annot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.

* * * * *

Oh! I could play the woman with mine eyes."--_Macbeth._

"To tell him herself" has some strange attraction for Clarissa. To
hear face to face, what this her oldest friend will say to her
engagement with Horace is a matter of great anxiety to her. She will
know at once by his eyes and smile whether he approves or disapproves
her choice.

Driving along the road to Scrope, behind her pretty ponies, "Cakes"
and "Ale," with her little rough Irish terrier, "Secretary Bill,"
sitting bolt upright beside her, as solemn as half a dozen judges, she
wonders anxiously how she shall begin to tell James about it.

She hopes to goodness he won't be in his ultra-grave mood, that, as a
rule, leads up to his finding fault with everything, and picking
things to pieces, and generally condemning the sound judgment of
others. (As a rule, Clarissa is a little unfair in her secret comments
on James Scrope's character.) It will be so much better if she can
only come upon him out of doors, in his homeliest mood, with a cigar
between his lips, or his pipe. Yes, his pipe will be even better. Men
are even more genial with a pipe than with the goodliest habana.

Well, of course, if he is the great friend he _professes_ to
be,--heavy emphasis on the verb, and a little flick on the whip on
"Cakes's" quarters, which the spirited but docile creature resents
bitterly,--he must be glad at the thought that she is not going to
leave the country,--is, in fact, very likely to spend most of her time
still in Pullingham.

Not all of it, of course. Horace has duties, and though in her secret
soul she detests town life, still there is a joy In the thought that
she will be with him, helping him, encouraging him in his work,
rejoicing in his successes, sympathyzing with his fai----, but no, of
course there will be no failures! How stupid of her to think of that,
when he is so clever, so learned, so----

Yet it would be sweet, too, to have him fail once or twice (just a
little, insignificant, not-worth-speaking-about sort of a defeat), if
only to let him see how she could love him even the more for it.

She blushes, and smiles to herself, and, turning suddenly, bestows a
most unexpected caress upon "Secretary Bill," who wags his short tail
in return--that is, what they left him of it--lovingly, if somewhat
anxiously, and glances at her sidew