restless, tells herself
she will go up to Gowran and see Clarissa. To her alone she
clings,--not outwardly, in any marked fashion, but in her inmost
soul,--as to one who at her worst extremity will support and comfort
her.

The day is warm and full of color. Round her "flow the winds from
woods and fields with gladness laden:" the air is full of life. The
browning grass rustles beneath her feet. The leaves fall slowly one by
one, as though loath to leave their early home; the wind, cruel, like
all love, wooes them only to their doom.

"The waves, along the forest borne," beat on her face and head, and
half cool the despairing thoughts that now always lie hidden deep down
within her breast.

Coming to Gowran and seeing Clarissa in the drawing room window, she
beckons to her, and Clarissa, rising hastily, opens the hall door for
her, herself, and leads her by the hand into another cosier room,
where they may talk without interruption.

It so happens that Georgie is in one of her worst moods; and something
Clarissa says very innocently brings on a burst of passion that
compels Clarissa to understand (in spite of all her efforts to think
herself in the wrong) that the dissensions at Sartoris have a great
deal to do with Ruth Annersley.

"It is impossible," she says, over and over again, walking up and down
the room in an agitated manner. "I could almost as soon believe Horace
guilty of this thing!"

Georgie makes no reply. Inwardly she has conceived a great distaste to
the handsome Horace, and considers him a very inferior person, and
quite unfit to mate with her pretty Clarissa.

"In your heart," says Miss Peyton, stopping before her, "I don't
believe you think Dorian guilty of this thing."

"Yes I do," says Mrs. Branscombe, with dogged calmness. "I don't ask
you to agree with me. I only tell you what I myself honestly believe."
She has given up fighting against her fate by this time.

"There is some terrible mistake somewhere," says Clarissa, in a very
distressed voice, feeling it wiser not to argue the point further.
"Time will surely clear it up sooner or later, but it is very severe
on Dorian while it lasts. I have known the dear fellow all my life,
and cannot now begin to think evil of him. I have always felt more
like a sister to him than anything else, and I cannot believe him
guilty of this thing."

"_I_ am his wife, and I _can_," says Mrs. Branscombe, icily.

"If you loved him as you ought, you cou