And of course the day came to which Hewett had looked forward--the day when Sidney could no longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour.

Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife.

He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them.

The thought of Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love which at length he recognised there blended a sense of fate fulfilling itself.

His enthusiasms, his purposes, never defined as education would have defined them, were dissipated into utter vagueness.