Once or twice he had caught himself calling her Clara, and had done so even before her mother; but no notice had been taken of it.

In truth, Lady Desmond did not know her daughter, for the mother took her absolutely to be a child, when in fact she was a child no longer.
"You take Clara round by the bridge," said the earl to his friend one August evening, as they were standing together on the banks of the river, about a quarter of a mile distant from the sombre old pile in which the family lived.

"You take Clara round by the bridge, and I will get over the stepping-stones." And so the lad, with his rod in his hand, began to descend the steep bank.
"I can get over the stepping-stones, too, Patrick," said she.
"Can you though, my gay young woman?
You'll be over your ankles if you do.

That rain didn't come down yesterday for nothing." Clara as she spoke had come up to the bank, and now looked wistfully down at the stepping-stones.

She had crossed them scores of times, sometimes with her brother, and often by herself.