And now what was to be done!  Clara went up to her own room, making herself strong and even comfortable, with an inward assurance that nothing should ever induce her even to sit down to table again with Lady Aylmer.  She would not willingly enter the same room with Lady Aylmer, or have any speech with her.  But what should she at once do?  She could not very well leave Aylmer Park without settling whither she would go; nor could she in any way manage to leave the house on that afternoon.  She almost resolved that she would go to Mrs Askerton.  Everything was of course over between her and Captain Aylmer, and therefore there was no longer any hindrance to her doing so on that score.  But what would be her Cousin Will’s wish?  He, now, was the only friend to whom she could trust for good counsel.  What would be his advice?  Should she write and ask him?  No she could not do that.  She could not bring herself to write to him, telling him that the Aylmer ‘entanglement’ was at an end.  Were she to do so, he, with his temperament, would take such letter as meaning much more than it was intended to mean.  But she would write a letter to Captain Aylmer.  This she thought that she would do at once, and she began it.

She got as far as ‘My dear Captain Aylmer,’ and then she found that the letter was one which could not be written very easily.  And she remembered, as the greatness of the difficulty of writing the letter became plain to her, that it could not now be sent so as to reach Captain Aylmer before he would leave London.  If written at all, it must be addressed to him at Aylmer Park, and the task might be done tomorrow as well as today.  So that task was given up for the present.

But she did write a letter to Mrs Askerton a letter which she would send or not on the morrow, according to the state of her mind as it might then be.  In this she declared her purpose of leaving Aylmer Park on the day after Captain Aylmer’s arrival, and asked to be taken in at the cottage.  An answer was to be sent to her, addressed to the Great Northern Railway Hotel.

Richards, the maid, came up to her before dinner, with offers of assistance for dressing offers made in a tone which left no doubt on Clara’s mind that Richards knew all about the quarrel.  But Clara declined to be dressed, and sent down a message saying that she would remain in her room, and begging to be supplied with tea.  She would not even condescend to say that she was troubled with a headache.  Then Belinda came up to her, just before dinner was announced, and with a fluttered gravity advised Miss Amedroz to come down-stairs.  ’Mamma thinks it will be much better that you should show yourself, let the final result be what it may.’

‘But I have not the slightest desire to show myself.’

‘There are the servants, you know.’

’But, Miss Aylmer, I don’t care a straw for the servants really not a straw.’

‘And papa will feel it so.’