or on my aunt,' he added, cheerfully. 'No, it won't; you will be
thinking of Jem and Isabel.' And as his father came up, his last
words were, in his own bright tone, 'Tell granny from me that
giraffes ought always to be seen by gaslight.'

Clara's countenance returned him a look of sorrowful reproach, for
thinking her capable of being amused when he was in distress; and
she sat in silent musings all the way home--pondering over his words,
speculating on his future, wondering what Mary felt, and becoming
blunt and almost angry, when her grave escort in the opposite corner
consulted civility by addressing some indifferent remark to her, as
if, she said to herself, 'she were no better than a stuffed giraffe,
and knew and cared nothing about anybody!'

He might have guessed that she understood something by the sudden way
in which she curtailed her grandmother's rapturous and affectionate
inquiries about the wedding, ran upstairs on the plea of taking off
her bonnet, and appeared no more till he had gone home; when, coming
down, she found granny, with tearful eyes, lamenting that Mr.
Ponsonby was so harsh and unkind, and fully possessed with the
rational view which her nephew had been impressing on her.

'Ha!' said Clara, 'that is what Louis meant. I'll tell you what,
granny, Lord Ormersfield never knew in his life what was right, half
as well as Louis does. I wish he would let him alone. If Mary is
good enough for him, she will go out and wait till her father comes
round. If she is not, she won't; and Lord Ormersfield has no
business to tease her.'

'Then you would like her to go out?' said Mrs. Frost.