Poor Lord Calderwood! Don't imagine that I am not heartily sorry for him;
he was always a good friend to me; but his death has been most opportune.
It has saved me, Clarissa. But for that I should have been a married man
this night, a bound slave for evermore. You can never conceive the gloomy
dogged spirit in which I was going to my doom. Thank God, the release came;
and here, sitting by your side, a free man, I feel how bitter a bondage I
have escaped."
He put his arm round Clarissa, and tried to draw her towards him; but she
released herself from him with a quick proud movement, and rose from her
seat on the low wall. He rose at the same moment, and they stood facing
each other in the darkening twilight.
"And what then, Mr. Fairfax?" she said, trembling a little, but looking him
steadily in the face nevertheless. "When you have behaved like a traitor,
and broken your engagement, what then?"
"What then? Is there any possible doubt about what must come then? You will
be my wife, Clarissa!"
"You think that I would be an accomplice to such cruelty? You think that
I could be so basely ungrateful to Lady Laura, my first friend? Yes, Mr.
Fairfax, the first friend I ever had, except my aunt, whose friendship has
always seemed a kind of duty. You think that after all her goodness to me I
could have any part in breaking her sister's heart?"
"I think there is one person whose feelings you overlook in this business.
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