acknowledged no lord an hour earlier, had met her match, and, as the
observer would have said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming
possibility by the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's
character, and by Clara's having spoken to a man as well (to Vernon),
and previously. That a young lady should speak on the subject of the
inner holies to a man, though he were Vernon Whitford, was incredible
to Laetitia; but it had to be accepted as one of the dread facts of our
inexplicable life, which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our
minds exclaiming. Then, if Clara could speak to Vernon, which Laetitia
would not have done for a mighty bribe, she could speak to De Craye,
Laetitia thought deductively: this being the logic of untrained heads
opposed to the proceeding whereby their condemnatory deduction
hangs.--Clara must have spoken to De Craye!

Laetitia remembered how winning and prevailing Miss Middleton could be
in her confidences. A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to
his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara:
ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to
entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not asking herself whether
the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them
rise from where they lay imbedded. Very gentle women take in that
manner impressions of persons, especially of the worshipped person,
wounding them; like the new fortifications with embankments of soft
earth, where explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly until they
are plucked out; and it may be a reason why those injured ladies
outlive a Clara Middleton similarly battered.

Vernon less than Laetitia took into account that Clara was in a state
of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her confidences to him he had excused,
as a piece of conduct, in sympathy with her position. He had not been