at he was not ashamed of what he had
done and said. Then he realised, all at once, for the second time, that
Clare had been on the platform on that first night, and he tried to
recall everything that Lady Fan and he had said to each other.

No such thing had ever happened to him before, and he had a sensation of
shame and distress and anger, as he went over the scene, and thought of
the innocent young girl who had sat in the shadow and heard it all. She
had accidentally crossed the broad, clear line of demarcation which he
drew between her kind and all the tribe of Lady Fans and Mrs. Cairngorms
whom he had known. He felt somehow as though it were his fault, and as
though he were responsible to Clare for what she had heard and seen. The
sensation of shame deepened, and he swore bitterly under his breath. It
was one of those things which could not be undone, and for which there
was no reparation possible. Yet it was like an insult to Clare. For a
man who had lately been rough to the girl, almost to brutality, he was
singularly sensitive perhaps. But that did not strike him. When he had
told her that he loved her, he had been too much in earnest to pick and
choose his expressions. But when he had spoken to Lady Fan, he might
have chosen and selected and polished his phrases so that Clare should
have understood nothing--if he had only known that she had been sitting
up there by the cross in the dark. And again he cursed himself bitterly.

It was not because her knowing the facts had spoilt everything and
given her a bad impression of him from the first: that might be set
right in time, even now, and he did not wish her to marry him believing
him to be an angel of light. It was that she should have seen something
which she should not have seen, for her innocence's sake--something
which, in a sense, must have offended and wounded her maidenliness. He
would have struck any man who could have laughed at his sensitiveness
about that. The worst of it--and he went back to the idea again and
again--was that nothing could be done to mend matters, since it was all
so completely in the past.

He sat on the wall and pulled at his briar-root pipe, which had gone out
and was quite cold by this time, though he hardly knew it. He had plenty
to think of, and things were not going straight at all. He had pretended
indifference when his mother had told him how Lady Fan meant to get a
divorce and how she was telling her intimate friends under