She had candles brought to her, and sitting down, she wrote a note
to Owen Fitzgerald, saying that she herself would call at Hap House
at an hour named on the following day.

She had written three or four letters before she had made up her
mind exactly as to the one she would send. At first she had desired
him to come to her there at Desmond Court; but then she thought of
the danger there might be of Clara seeing him;--of the danger, also,
of her own feelings towards him when he should be there with her, in
her own house, in the accustomed way. And she tried to say by letter
all that it behoved her to say, so that there need be no meeting.
But in this she failed. One letter was stern and arrogant, and the
next was soft-hearted, so that it might teach him to think that his
love for Clara might yet be successful. At last she resolved to go
herself to Hap House; and accordingly she wrote her letter and
despatched it.

Fitzgerald was of course aware of the subject of the threatened
visit. When he determined to make his proposal to Clara, the matter
did not seem to him to be one in which all chances of success were
desperate. If, he thought, he could induce the girl to love him,
other smaller difficulties might be made to vanish from his path. He
had now induced the girl to own that she did love him; but not the
less did he begin to see that the difficulties were far from
vanishing. Lady Desmond would never have taken upon herself to make
a journey to Hap House, had not a sentence of absolute banishment
from Desmond Court been passed against him.

"Mr. Fitzgerald," she began, as soon as she found herself alone with
him, "you will understand what has induced me to seek you here.