do you really mean what you say?"

"Wait a little, Lucy, and you shall judge for yourself. We must go
back--if I am to make you understand me--to the year before we knew each
other--to the last year of my father's life. Did I ever tell you that my
father moved southward, for the sake of his health, to a house in Kent
that was lent to him by a friend?"

"No, my dear; I don't remember ever hearing of the house in Kent. Tell
me about it."

"There is nothing to tell, except this: the new house was near a fine
country-seat standing in its own park. The owner of the place was
a gentleman named Wardour. He, too, was one of my father's Kentish
friends. He had an only son."

She paused, and played nervously with her fan. Mrs. Crayford looked at
her attentively. Clara's eyes remained fixed on her fan--Clara said no
more. "What was the son's name?" asked Mrs. Crayford, quietly.

"Richard."

"Am I right, Clara, in suspecting that Mr. Richard Wardour admired you?"

The question produced its intended effect. The question helped Clara to
go on.

"I hardly knew at first," she said, "whether he admired me or not.
He was very strange in his ways--headstrong, terribly headstrong and
passionate; but generous and affectionate in spite of his faults of
temper. Can you understand such a character?"

"Such characters exist by thousands. I have my faults of temper. I begin
to like Richard already. Go on."

"The days went by, Lucy, and the weeks went by. We were thrown very
much together. I began, little by little, to have some suspicion of the
truth."

"And Richard helped to confirm your suspicions, of course?"

"No. He was not--unhappily for me--he was not that sort of man. He never
spoke of the feeling with which he regarded me. It was I who saw it. I
couldn't help seeing it. I did all I could to show that I was willing to
be a sister to him, and that I could never be anything else. He did not
understand me, or he would not, I can't say which."

"'Would not,' is the most likely, my dear. Go on."

"It might have been as you say. There was a strange, rough bashfulness
about him. He confused and puzzled me. He never spoke out. He seemed
to treat me as if our future lives had been provided for while we were
children. What could I do, Lucy?"

"Do? You could have asked your father to end the difficulty for you."

"Impossible! You forget what I have just told you. My father was
suffering at that time under the illness which afte