of music, drawing, dancing, and a couple of
modern languages to her pretty, docile, intelligent
pupil. The more solid branches of
instruction Clare had climbed under Miss
Pettigrew's personal care, and had "done credit" to
her instructress, as the phrase goes. But. the
upshot of it all was, that she had very little
sound knowledge, and that the real educational
process had commenced for her with the
termination of Miss Pettigrew's reign, and had
received considerable impetus when Clare had been
transferred—on the not particularly lamented
decease of the fashionable mother, who was Sir
Thomas Boldero's sister, and remarkably unlike
that hearty and unworldly country gentleman,—
to Poynings and the guardianship of Mr.
Carruthers. Then the girl began to read after her
own fancy indeed, unguided and uncontrolled,
but in an omnivorous fashion; and as she was
full of feeling, fancy, and enthusiasm, her reading
ran a good deal in the poetical, romantic,
and imaginative line. Novels she devoured,
and she was of course a devotee of Tennyson
and Longfellow, saying of the latter, as her
highest idea of praise, that she could hardly
believe him to be an American, or a dweller in
that odious vulgar country, and wondering why
Mrs. Carruthers seemed a little annoyed by the
observation. She read history, too, provided it
was picturesquely written, and books of travel,
exploration, and adventure she delighted in.
Periodical literature she was specially addicted
to, and it was rather a pleasant little vanity of
Clare to "keep up with" all the serial stories
—not confusing the characters or the incidents,
no matter how numerous they were, and to
know the tables of contents of all the
magazines and reviews thoroughly. She had so much
access to books that, as far as a lady's possible
requirements could go, it might be said, without
exaggeration, to be unlimited. Not only
did the Sycamores boast a fine library, kept up
with the utmost care and attention by Sir
Thomas Boldero, and of which she had the freedom,
but Poynings was also very respectably
endowed in a similar respect, and Mrs. Carruthers,
as persistent a reader as Clare, if less
discursive, subscribed largely to Mudie's. Croquet
had not yet assumed its sovereign sway over
English young-persondom, and none but ponderous
and formal hospitalities prevailed at Poynings,
so that Clare had ample leisure to bestow upon
her books, her pets, and her flowers. She was so
surrounded with luxury and comfort, that it was
not wonderful she should invest opposite
conditions of existence with irresistible charms, and
her habitual associates were so common-place,
so prosperous and conventional, that her
aspirations for opportunities of hero-worship
naturally directed themselves towards oppressed
worth, unappreciated genius, and fiery hearts
struggling manfully with adverse fate. "The
red planet Mars" was a great favourite with
her, and to suffer and be strong a much finer
idea to her mind than not to suffer and to have
no particular occasion for strength. She knew
little of the realities of life, having never had a
deeper grief than that caused by the death of
her mother, and she was in the habit of
reproaching herself very bitterly with the
superficiality and the insufficiency of the sorrow she
had experienced on that occasion, and therefore
mild and merciful judges would have pitied and
excused her errors of judgment, her impulsive
departure from conventional rules. Mild and
merciful judges are not plentiful commodities,
however, and Mrs. Grundy would doubtless
have had a great deal to say, and a very fair
pretext for saying it, had she seen Miss Carruthers
strolling through the fields which lay
between the Sycamores and Amherst, in deep and
undisguisedly delighted conversation with a
strange young man, who was apparently absorbed
in the pleasure of talking to and listening to her,
while Cæsar trotted now by the side of the one,
anon of the other, with serene and friendly
complacency. Mrs. Grundy was, however, not destined
to know anything about the "very suspicious"
circumstance for the present. And George
Dallas and Clare Carruthers, with the
unscrupulous yielding to the impulse of the moment,
which affords youth such splendid opportunities
for getting into scrapes, from which the utmost
efforts of their elders are powerless to extract
them, walked and talked and improved the
shining hours into a familiar acquaintance,
which the girl would have called friendship, but
which the young man felt, only too surely, was
love at first sight. He had mocked at such an
idea, had denied its existence, had derided it
with tongue and pen, but here it was, facing
him now, delivering to him a silent challenge to
deny, dispute, or mock at it any more.

A faint suspicion that the beautiful girl whom
he had seen yesterday for the second time
meant something in his life, which no woman
had ever meant before, had hung about him
since he had left the Sycamores after their first
interview; but now, as he walked beside her, he
felt that he had entered the enchanted land,
that he had passed away from old things, and
the chain of his old life had fallen from him.
For weal or woe, present with her or absent
from her, he knew he loved this girl, the one
girl whom it was absolutely forbidden to him to
love.

They had talked common-places at first,
though each was conscious that the flurried
earnestness of the other's manner was an
absurd commentary upon the ordinary style of
their conversation. George had asked, and
Clare had implied, no permission for him to
accompany her on her walk; he had quietly taken
it for granted, and she had as quietly acquiesced,
and it so happened that they did not meet a
single person to stare at the tall, gaunt-looking,
but handsome stranger walking with Miss
Carruthers, to wonder who he "mought a bin,"
and proceed to impart his curiosity to the
servants at the Sycamores, or the gossip at the
alehouse.

"This path is not much used," said George.

"No, very little indeed," replied Clare.
"You see it does not lead directly anywhere
but to the Sycamores and so the farming
people, my uncle's servants, and tradespeople,