Your affectionate Cousin,

William Belton.

It was a bad day for me when I made up my mind to go to Belton Castle last summer.’

Clara, when she had read the letter, sat down and cried, holding the bundle of notes in her hand.  What would she do with them?  Should she send them back?  Oh no she would do nothing to displease him, or to make him think that she was angry with him.  Besides, she had none of that dislike to taking his money which she had felt as to receiving money from Captain Aylmer.  He had said that she would be his sister, and she would take from him any assistance that a sister might properly take from a brother.

She went down-stairs and met Captain Aylmer in the sitting-room.  He stepped up to her as soon as the door was closed, and she could at once see that he had determined to forget the unpleasantness of the previous evening.  He stepped up to her, and gracefully taking her by one hand, and passing the other behind her waist, saluted her in a becoming and appropriate manner.  She did not like it.  She especially disliked it, believing in her heart of hearts that she would never become the wife of this man whom she had professed to love and whom she really had once loved.  But she could only bear it.  And, to say the truth, there was not much suffering of that kind to be borne.

Their journey down to Yorkshire was very prosperous.  He maintained his good humour throughout the day, and never once said a word about Will Belton.  Nor did he say a word about Mrs Askerton.  ’Do your best to please my mother, Clara,’ he said, as they were driving up from the park lodges to the house.  This was fair enough, and she therefore promised him that she would do her best.

CHAPTER XXV

MISS AMEDROZ HAS SOME HASHED CHICKEN

Clara felt herself to be a coward as the Aylmer Park carriage, which had been sent to meet her at the station, was drawn up at Sir Anthony Aylmer’s door.  She had made up her mind that she would not bow down to Lady Aylmer, and yet she was afraid of the woman.  As she got out of the carriage, she looked up, expecting to see her in the hall; but Lady Aylmer was too accurately acquainted with the weights and measures of society for any such movement as that.  Had her son brought Lady Emily to the house as his future bride, Lady Aylmer would probably have been in the hall when the arrival took place; and had Clara possessed ten thousand pounds of her own, she would probably have been met at the drawing-room door; but as she had neither money nor title as she in fact brought with her no advantages of any sort Lady Aylmer was found stitching a bit of worsted, as though she had expected no one to come to her.  And Belinda Aylmer was stitching also by special order from her mother.  The reader will remember that Lady Aylmer was not without strong hope that the engagement might even yet be broken off.  Snubbing, she thought, might probably be efficacious to this purpose, and so Clara was to be snubbed.