lainings, turns disconsolately away, and
passes from seat to seat, without accepting food at any of their
hands, until he comes to Clarissa. She, stooping, raises him to her
knee (her lashes wet with tears), and feeds him tenderly with the
dainty scraps upon her plate.

The whole scene, though simple, is suggestive of loss and loneliness.
Sartoris, leaving the table with some haste, goes to the window to
hide his emotion. Dorian follows him. Whereupon Horace, rising too,
crosses to where Clarissa sits, and, bending over her, says something
in a low tone.

The moments fly. A clock upon the mantel-piece chimes half-past four.
Some bird, in the exuberance of its mad joy, scurries wildly past the
windows. Sartoris, with a sigh, turns from the light, and, seeing Miss
Peyton and Horace still deep in conversation, frowns slightly.

"Horace, will you tell Durkin I want to see him at once, in the
library," he says, very quietly, yet with some latent irritability.

"In one moment," replies Horace, unmoved, going back to the low-toned
dialogue he has been carrying on with Clarissa.

"I am afraid I must lay myself open to the charge of rudeness," says
Sartoris, still very quietly, but with a peculiar smile. "But it is
important, and I must see Durkin at once. My dear Horace, oblige me in
this matter."

"Shall I not see Clarissa to her carriage first?" says Horace, raising
his dark eyes for one moment to his uncle's face.

"Dorian will see to that," says the old man, slowly, but so decisively
that Horace, bidding the girl a silent but warm farewell, with a bad
grace departs.

"How late it grows," says Miss Peyton, glancing at the clock; and,
drawing from a side-pocket her own watch, she examines it attentively,
as though to assure herself the huge timepiece on the mantel-shelf has
not told a deliberate lie. "I must go home! Papa will wonder where I
have been all this long time. Good-by, Mr. Branscombe" (she is still,
naturally, forgetful of the new title). "I hope," very sweetly, "you
will come to see us as soon as ever you can."

"Thank you, yes, I shall come very soon," says Sartoris; and then she
bids him good-by, and Dorian follows her from the room into the great
dark hall outside.

"How changed he is!" she says, turning suddenly to him, and
indicating, by a little backward motion of her head towards the
room she had just left, the person of whom she speaks. "How
altered!--Arthur, I mean. Not now, not by this grief