’Oh, heavens!  How little you can know of Lady Aylmer’s position and character!’

‘But if she is to be your mother-in-law?’

’And even if she were!  The idea of Lady Aylmer coming away from Aylmer Park all the way from Yorkshire, to such a house as this!  If they told me that the Queen was coming it would hardly disconcert me more.  But, dear, there is no danger of that at least.’

’I do not know what may have passed between you and him; but unless there has been some quarrel he will come.  That is, he will do so if he is at all like any men whom I have known.’

‘He will not come.’

Then Mrs Askerton made some half-whispered offers of services to be rendered by Colonel Askerton, and soon afterwards took her leave, having first asked permission to come again in the afternoon, and when that was declined, having promised to return on the following morning.  As she walked back to the cottage she could not but think more of Clara’s engagement to Captain Aylmer than she did of the squire’s death.  As regarded herself, of course she could not grieve for Mr Amedroz; and as regarded Clara, Clara’s father had for some time past been apparently so insignificant, even in his own house, that it was difficult to acknowledge the fact that the death of such a one as he might leave a great blank in the world.  But what had Clara meant by declaring so emphatically that Captain Aylmer would not visit Belton, and by speaking of herself as one who had neither position nor friends in the world?  If there had been a quarrel, indeed, then it was sufficiently intelligible and if there was any such quarrel, from what source must it have arisen?  Mrs Askerton felt the blood rise to her cheeks as she thought of this, and told herself that there could be but one such source.  Mrs Askerton knew that Clara had received orders from Aylmer Castle to discontinue all acquaintance with herself, and, therefore, there could be no doubt as to the cause of the quarrel.  It had come to this then, that Clara was to lose her husband because she was true to her friend; or rather because she would not consent to cast an additional stone at one who for some years past had become a mark for many stones.

I am not prepared to say that Mrs Askerton was a high-minded woman.  Misfortunes had come upon her in life of a sort which are too apt to quench high nobility of mind in woman.  There are calamities which, by their natural tendencies, elevate the character of women and add strength to the growth of feminine virtues but then, again, there are other calamities which few women can bear without some degradation, without some injury to that delicacy and tenderness which is essentially necessary to make a woman charming as a woman.  In this, I think, the world is harder to women than to men; that a woman often loses much by the chance of adverse circumstances which a man only loses by his own misconduct.  That there are women whom no calamity can degrade is true enough