I have come to a period of existence in which a man has to calculate his
resources. If I do not find happiness within the next five years, I am
never likely to find it at all. At three-and-thirty a man has done with a
heart, in a moral and poetic sense, and begins to entertain vague alarms on
the subject of fatty degeneration."

Clarissa smiled faintly, as if the stranger's idle talk scarcely beguiled
her from her own thoughts.

"You said you had been at Arden," she began rather abruptly; "then you must
know papa."

"No, I have not the honour to know Mr. Lovel," with the same embarrassed
air which he had exhibited before in speaking of Arden Court. "But I am
acquainted--or I was acquainted, rather, for he and I have not met for some
time--with one member of your family, a Mr. Austin Lovel."

"My brother," Clarissa said quickly, and with a sudden shadow upon her
face.

"Your brother; yes, I supposed as much."

"Poor Austin! It is very sad. Papa and he are ill friends. There was some
desperate quarrel between them a few years ago; I do not even know what
about; and Austin was turned out of doors, never to come back any more.
Papa told me nothing about it, though it was the common talk at Holborough.
It was only from a letter of my aunt's that I learnt what had happened; and
I am never to speak of Austin when I go home, my aunt told me."

"Very hard lines," said the stranger, with a sympathetic air. "He was wild,