Half an hour passed;
forty minutes passed--and then his voice reached her from among the
distant trees. "Come in to heel!" she heard him call out loudly to the
dog. Her face turned pale. "He's angry with Snap!" she exclaimed to
herself in a whisper. The next minute he appeared in view; walking
rapidly, with his head down and Snap at his heels in disgrace. The
sudden excess of her alarm as she observed those ominous signs
of something wrong rallied her natural energy, and determined her
desperately on knowing the worst. She walked straight forward to meet
her father.
"Your face tells your news," she said faintly. "Mr. Clare has been as
heartless as usual--Mr. Clare has said No?"
Her father turned on her with a sudden severity, so entirely
unparalleled in her experience of him that she started back in downright
terror.
"Magdalen!" he said; "whenever you speak of my old friend and neighbor
again, bear this in mind: Mr. Clare has just laid me under an obligation
which I shall remember gratefully to the end of my life."
He stopped suddenly after saying those remarkable words. Seeing that he
had startled her, his natural kindness prompted him instantly to
soften the reproof, and to end the suspense from which she was plainly
suffering.
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