Clara Van Siever did stay all that night with Mrs. Broughton. In the course of the evening she received a note from her mother, in which she was told to come home to breakfast. "You can go back to her afterwards," said Mrs. Van Siever; "and I will see her myself in the course of the day, if she will let me." The note was written on a scrap of paper, and had neither beginning nor end; but this was after the manner of Mrs. Van Siever, and Clara was not in the least hurt or surprised. "My mother will come to see you after breakfast," said Clara, as she was taking her leave.

"Oh, goodness! And what shall I say to her?"

"You will have to say very little. She will speak to you."

"I suppose everything belongs to her now," said Mrs. Broughton.

"I know nothing about that. I never do know anything of mamma\'s money matters."

"Of course she\'ll turn me out. I do not mind a bit about that,—only I hope she\'ll let me have some mourning." Then she made Clara promise that she would return as soon as possible, having in Clara\'s presence overcome all that feeling of dislike which she had expressed to Conway Dalrymple. Mrs. Broughton was generally affectionate to those who were near to her. Had Musselboro forced himself into her presence, she would have become quite confidential with him before he left her.

"Mr. Musselboro will be here directly," said Mrs. Van Siever, as she was starting for Mrs. Broughton\'s house. "You had better tell him to come to me there; or, stop,—perhaps you had better keep him here till I come back. Tell him to be sure and wait for me."

"Very well, mamma. I suppose he can wait below?"

"Why should he wait below?" said Mrs. Van Siever, very angrily.

Clara had made the uncourteous proposition to her mother with the express intention of making it understood that she would have nothing to say to him. "He can come upstairs if he likes it," said Clara; "and I will go up to my room."

"If you fight shy of him, miss, you may remember this,—that you will fight shy of me at the same time."

"I am sorry for that, mamma, for I shall certainly fight shy of Mr. Musselboro."

"You can do as you please. I can\'t force you, and I shan\'t try. But I can make your life a burden to you,—and I will. What\'s the matter with the man that he isn\'t good enough for you? He\'s as good as any of your own people ever was. I hate your new-fangled airs,—with pictures painted on the sly, and all the rest of it. I hate such ways. See what they have brought that wretched man to, and the poor fool his wife. If you go and marry that painter, some of these days you\'ll be very much like what she is. Only I doubt whether he has got courage enough to blow his brains out." With these comfortable words, the old woman took herself off, leaving Clara to entertain her lover as best she might choose.

Mr. Musselboro was not long in coming, and, in accordance with Mrs. Van Siever\'s implied directions to her daughter, was shown up into the drawing-room. Clara gave him her mother\'s message in a very few words. "I was expressly told, sir, to ask you to stop, if it is not inconvenient, as she very much wants to see you." Mr. Musselboro declared that of course he would stop. He was only too happy to have an opportunity of remaining in such delightful society. As Clara answered nothing to this, he went on to say that he hoped that the melancholy occasion of Mrs. Van Siever\'s visit to Mrs. Broughton might make a long absence necessary,—he did not, indeed, care how long it might be. He had recovered now from that paleness, and that want of gloves and jewellery which had befallen him on the previous day immediately after the sight he had seen in the City. Clara made no answer to the last speech, but, putting some things together in her work-basket, prepared to leave the room. "I hope you are not going to leave me?" he said, in a voice that was intended to convey much of love, and something of melancholy.

"I am so shocked by what has happened, Mr. Musselboro, that I am altogether unfit for conversation. I was with poor Mrs. Broughton last night, and I shall return to her when mamma comes home."

"It is sad, certainly; but what was there to be expected? If you\'d only seen how he used to go on." To this Clara made no answer. "Don\'t go yet," said he; "there is something that I want to say to you. There is, indeed."

Clara Van Siever was a young woman whose presence of mind rarely deserted her. It occurred to her now that she must undergo on some occasion the nuisance of a direct offer from this man, and that she could have no better opportunity of answering him after her own fashion than the present. Her mother was absent, and the field was her own. And, moreover, it was a point in her favour that the tragedy which had so lately occurred, and to which she had just now alluded, would give her a fair excuse for additional severity. At such a moment no man could, she told herself, be justified in making an offer of his love, and therefore she might rebuke him with the less remorse. I wonder whether the last words which Conway Dalrymple had spoken to her stung her conscience as she thought of this! She had now reached the door, and was standing close to it. As Mr. Musselboro did not at once begin, she encouraged him. "If you have anything special to tell me, of course I will hear you," she said.

"Miss Clara," he began, rising from his chair, and coming into the middle of the room, "I think you know what my wishes are." Then he put his hand upon his heart. "And your respected mother is the same way of thinking. It\'s that that emboldens me to be so sudden. Not but what my heart has been yours and yours only all along, before the old lady so much as mentioned it." Clara would give him no assistance, not even the aid of a negative, but stood there quite passive, with her hand on the door. "Since I first had the pleasure of seeing you I have always said to myself, \'Augustus Musselboro, that is the woman for you, if you can only win her.\' But then there was so much against me,—wasn\'t there?" She would not even take advantage of this by assuring him that there certainly always had been much against him, but allowed him to go on till he should run out all the length of his tether. "I mean, of course, in the way of money," he continued. "I hadn\'t much that I could call my own when your respected mamma first allowed me to become acquainted with you. But it\'s different now; and I think I may say that I\'m all right in that respect. Poor Broughton\'s going in this way will make it a deal smoother to me; and I may say that I and your mamma will be all in all to each other now about money." Then he stopped.

"I don\'t quite understand what you mean by all this," said Clara.

"I mean that there isn\'t a more devoted fellow in all London than what I am to you." Then he was about to go down on one knee, but it occurred to him that it would not be convenient to kneel to a lady who would stand quite close to the door. "One and one, if they\'re put together well, will often make more than two, and so they shall with us," said Musselboro, who began to feel that it might be expedient to throw a little spirit into his words.

"If you have done," said Clara, "you may as well hear me for a minute. And I hope you will have sense to understand that I really mean what I say."

"I hope you will remember what are your mamma\'s wishes."

"Mamma\'s wishes have no influence whatsoever with me in such matters as this. Mamma\'s arrangements with you are for her own convenience, and I am not a party to them. I do not know anything about mamma\'s money, and I do not want to know. But under no possible circumstances will I consent to become your wife. Nothing that mamma could say or do would induce me even to think of it. I hope you will be man enough to take this for an answer, and say nothing more about it."

"But, Miss Clara—"

"It\'s no good your Miss Claraing me, sir. What I have said you may be sure I mean. Good-morning, sir." Then she opened the door, and left him.

"By Jove, she is a Tartar," said Musselboro to himself, when he was alone. "They\'re both Tartars, but the younger is the worse." Then he began to speculate whether Fortune was not doing the best for him in so arranging that he might have the use of the Tartar-mother\'s money without binding himself to endure for life the Tartar qualities of the daughter.

It had been understood that Clara was to wait at home till her mother should return before she again went across to Mrs. Broughton. At about eleven Mrs. Van Siever came in, and her daughter intercepted her at the dining-room door before she had made her way upstairs to Mr. Musselboro. "How is she, mamma?" said Clara with something of hypocrisy in her assumed interest for Mrs. Broughton.

"She is an idiot," said Mrs. Van Siever.

"She has had a terrible misfortune!"

"That is no reason why she should be an idiot; and she is heartless too. She never cared a bit for him;—not a bit.&............