‘Then you had better go.’

‘But I will not submit myself to her tyranny.’

’Let the marriage take place at once, and you will have to submit only to his.  I suppose you are prepared for that?’

‘I do not know.  I do not like tyranny.’

Again he stood silent for awhile, looking at her, and then he answered:  ’ I should not tyrannize over you, Clara.’

‘Oh, Will, Will, do not speak like that.  Do not destroy everything.’

‘What am I to say?’

’What would you say if your sister, your real sister, asked advice in such a strait?  If you had a sister, who came to you, and told you all her difficulty, you would advise her.  You would not say words to make things worse for her.’

‘It would be very different.’

‘But you said you would be my brother.’

’How am I to know what you feel for this man?  It seems to me that you half hate him, half fear him, and sometimes despise him.’

‘Hate him!  No I never hate him.’

‘Go to him, then, and ask him what you had better do.  Don’t ask me.’  Then he hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him.  But before he had half gone down the stairs he remembered the ceremony at which he had just been present, and how desolate she was in the world, and he returned to her.  ‘I beg your pardon, Clara,’ he said, ’I am passionate; but I must be a beast to show my passion to you on such a day as this.  If I were you I should accept Lady Aylmer’s invitation merely thanking her for it in the ordinary way.  I should then go and see how the land lay.  That is the advice I should give my sister.’

‘And I will if it is only because you tell me.’

’But as for a home tell her you have one of your own at Belton Castle, from which no one can turn you out, and where no one can intrude on you.  This house belongs to you.’  Then, before she could answer him, he had left the room and she listened to his heavy quick footsteps as he went across the hall and out of the front door.

He walked across the park and entered the little gate of Colonel Askerton’s garden, as though it were his habit to go to the cottage when he was at Belton.  There had been various matters on which the two men had been brought into contact concerning the old squire’s death and the tenancy of the cottage, so that they had become almost intimate.  Belton had nothing new that he specially desired to say to Colonel Askerton, whom, indeed, he had seen only a short time before at the funeral; but he wanted the relief of speaking to some one before he returned to the solitude of the inn at Redicote.  On this occasion, however, the colonel was out, and the maid asked him if he would see Mrs Askerton.  When he said something about not troubling her, the girl told him that her mistress wished to speak to him, and then he had no alternative but to allow himself to be shown into the drawing-room.

‘I want to see you a minute,’ said Mrs Askerton, bowing to him without putting out her hand, ‘that I might ask you how you find your cousin.’