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They were walking toward the house. Kerr looked up at the window where, a short time before, Clara's face had looked down upon the confusion in the garden. "Is that paid woman still here?" "Oh, no; she's gone." Flora looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrick had caught his tone. "Why shouldn't she be?" she demanded with delicate asperity. Kerr had dropped his monocle.
Clara again looked suspicious, but only said it was inconsiderate of Katie to expect her to receive a lawyer with her poor eyes in that condition. But when Katie returned with him Clara's eyes were a softer red and she managed to extract from the interview the pleasure of showing him that she was suffering. As she watched the transaction, Katie felt a little ashamed of herself.
"Is he clever?" "Very." "He talks well?" "Yes." "Handsome?" "He might be thought so." "Witty?" "I think he is." "Gay, cheerful?" "In his manner." "Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other. And poor?" "He is not wealthy." Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara's fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving.
He that touches that rejected thing is larcenous. Willoughby had been sensible of it in the person of Laetitia: and by all the more that Clara's charms exceeded the faded creature's, he felt it now. Ten thousand Furies thickened about him at a thought of her lying by the road-side without his having crushed all bloom and odour out of her which might tempt even the curiosity of the fiend, man.
This very heart of English country that the old Moretons in their paternal way had so religiously farmed, making out of its lush grass and waving corn a simple and by no means selfish or ungenerous subsistence, was now entirely lawns, park, coverts, and private golf course, together with enough grass to support the kine which yielded that continual stream of milk necessary to Clara's entertainments and children, all female, save little Francis, and still of tender years.
As soon as Humphrey had obtained what was requisite, Chaloner and Grenville were conducted to Clara's cottage, and took possession, of course never showing themselves outside the wood which surrounded it. Humphrey lent them Holdfast as a watch dog, and they took leave of Alice and Edith with much regret. Humphrey and Edward accompanied them to their new abode.
Clara's heart swelled as she thought of all this, and all at once the prim Abigail was astonished out of all propriety by a burst of sobs from the corner in which Clara had retreated. The young man looked up and came out of his own melancholy thoughts, just as Mrs.
Morris make cheese, or to find the sun-dew blossom open, or to sketch some effect of morning sun. Louis would afterwards be tired and unhinged the whole day, but never convinced, only capable of promoting Clara's chatter; and ready the next day to stand about with her in the sun at the cottages, to the increase of her freckles, and the detriment of his ankle.
Plunged into the depths of despair, goaded by longing and ardent desire, he hurried outside the walls of the town. Olimpia's image hovered about his path in the air and stepped forth out of the bushes, and peeped up at him with large and lustrous eyes from the bright surface of the brook. Clara's image was completely faded from his mind; he had no thoughts except for Olimpia.
The old man, finding that his warnings were of no avail, forbade all acquaintance, forbade Robert's visits to his house. Then, inaugurating at once Clara's career as a virtuoso, he took her to Vienna. No wonder, that, when she appeared there, it was to be as the priestess of Beethoven. It takes something besides an academy to train artists up to Beethoven.
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