and I promised to
bring you back, dead or alive, sir--dead or alive!"

Hepworth felt his heart give a great leap. Was it possible that Clara
could have followed him? or was it Lady Hope?

"A lady!" he said, "and at the lodge?"

"A young lady--such as isn't commonly seen following young gents by
moonlight; but come, sir, she is waiting."

Hepworth turned at once, and retraced his steps. Clara saw him
approaching the gate, and swinging it back, ran to meet him, with tears
still quivering on her anxious face.

She passed Badger, who was resolved to earn his money at least by
discretion, and moved in great haste toward the lodge, never once
looking back, as in honor bound, he told Jules in his next confidential
conversation.

"Oh, Hepworth, how cruel! how wicked! Tell me truly, were you going
without a word?"

Clara had clasped both hands over her lover's arm, and was slowly
leading him back, with her face uplifted in sweet reproachfulness to
his, and drawing deep, long sighs of thanksgiving that she had him
there, chained by her linked hands.

"I do not know. How can I tell? Your father has dismissed me from his
house."

"He has? I thought as much; and thinking so, came after you--but only to
say that I love you dearly--ten times more since this has happened--and
nothing on earth shall ever make me marry any other person."

Hepworth looked down into that generous face, and his own took a softer
expression in the moonlight.

"Your father is against us," he said. "I think it must be open defiance,
or separation--at any rate, for a time."

Clara's face clouded. She loved her father, and was a little afraid of
him as well; but that was nothing to the passionate attachment she felt
for Hepworth Closs. She would have defied the whole world rather than
give him up; but open disobedience was a terrible thing to her. All at
once she brightened.

"Some day, you know, I shall be my own mistress. We can wait. I am so
young. When I am Countess of Carset, come and claim me. No one can stand
between us then."

She spoke firmly, and with the dignity of deep feeling, standing upright
and looking bravely into his face, as if she were a peeress already, and
was ready to pledge all the honor of a long race of ancestors for the
faith that was in her.

"Ah, if you were only the bright, handsome girl you seem, with no
dignity to keep up, no belongings but your own sweet self, how grateful
I should be! From this night, Clara