o
blame, if any one was to be blamed in the matter, for being so much
alike as to make all who saw them apart doubt which was Clara and which
was Jane. She said this with a faint smile, and an effort to speak
playfully, which touched us to the heart. Then, in a tone and manner
which I can never forget, she asked her sister--charging her, on their
mutual affection and mutual confidence, to answer sincerely--if _she_
had noticed Mr. Streatfield on the day of the _levee_, and had
afterwards remembered him at the dinner-table, as _he_ had noticed and
remembered _her_? It was only after Jane had repeated this appeal, still
more earnestly and affectionately, that Clara summoned courage and
composure enough to confess that she _had_ noticed Mr. Streatfield on
the day of the _levee_, had thought of him afterwards during his absence
from London, and had recognized him at our table, as he had recognized
her.

"Is it possible! I own I had not anticipated--not thought for one moment
of that," said Mr. Langley.

"Perhaps," continued his wife, "it is best that you should see Jane now,
and judge for yourself. For _my_ part, her noble resignation under this
great trial, has so astonished and impressed me, that I only feel
competent to advise, as she advises, to act as she thinks fit. I begin
to think that it is not _we_ who are to guide _her_, but _she_ who is to
guide _us_."

Mr. Langley lingered irresolute for a few minutes; then quitted the
room, and proceeded along to Jane Langley's apartment.

When he knocked at the door, it was opened by Clara. There was an
expression partly of confusion, partly of sorrow on her face; and when
her father stopped as if to speak to her, she merely pointed into the
room, and hurried away without uttering a word.

Mr. Langley had been prepared by his wife for the change that had taken
place in his daughter since the day before; but he felt startled, almost
overwhelmed, as he now looked on her. One of the poor girl's most
prominent personal attractions, from her earliest years, had been the
beauty of her complexion; and now, the freshness and the bloom had
entirely departed from her face; it seemed absolutely colorless. Her
expression, too, appeared to Mr. Langley's eye, to have undergone a
melancholy alteration; to have lost its youthfulness suddenly; to have
assumed a strange character of firmness and thoughtfulness, which he had
never observed in it before. She was sitting by an open window,