ses her, and,
standing back, confronts her with a face as livid as her own.

In the one hurried glance she casts at him, she knows that all is,
indeed, over between them now; never again will he sue to her for love
or friendship. She would have spoken again,--would, perhaps, have said
something to palliate the harshness of her last words,--but by a
gesture he forbids her. He points to the door.

"Leave the room," he says, in a stern commanding tone; and, utterly
subdued and silenced by his manner, she turns and leaves him.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

"A goodly apple, rotten at the heart.
Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"--_Merchant of Venice._

"No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on."--_Othello._

Dorian has been two months gone, and it is once again close on
Christmas-tide. All the world is beginning to think of gifts, and
tender greetings, and a coming year. Clarissa is dreaming of wedding
garments white as the snow that fell last night.

The post has just come in. Clarissa, waking, stretches her arms over
her head with a little lazy delicious yawn, and idly turns over her
letters one by one. But presently, as she breaks the seal of an
envelope, and reads what lies inside it, her mood changes, and,
springing from her bed, she begins to dress herself with nervous
rapidity.

Three hours later, Sir James, sitting in his library, is startled by
the apparition of Clarissa standing in the door-way with a very
miserable face.

"What on earth has happened?" says Sir James, who is a very practical
young man and always goes at once to the root of a mystery.

"Horace is ill," says Miss Peyton, in a tone that might have suited
the occasion had the skies just fallen. "Oh, Jim, what shall I do?"

"My dearest girl," says Scrope, going up to her and taking her hands.

"Yes, he is very ill! I had not heard from him for a fortnight, and
was growing wretchedly uneasy, when to-day a letter came from Aunt
Emily telling me he has been laid up with low fever for over ten days.
And he is very weak, the doctor says, and no one is with him. And papa
is in Paris, and Lord Sartoris is with Lady Monckton, and Dorian--no
one knows where Dorian is!"

"Most extraordinary his never getting any one to write you a line!"

"Doesn't that only show how fearfully ill he must be? Jim, you will
help me, won't you?"

This appeal is not to be put on one side.

"Of course I will," says Scrope: "you know that--or you ought. Wha