‘Now you are unkind to me.’

’Well; what would you have me say?  Do I not know that he is offering you the best gift that he can give?  Did I not begin by swearing to you that he loved you with a passion of love that cannot but be flattering to you?  If it is to be love in vain, this to him is a great misfortune.  And, yet, when I say that I hope that he will recover, you tell me that I am unkind.’

‘No not for that.’

‘May I tell him to come and plead for himself?’

Again Clara was silent, not knowing how to answer that last question.  And when she did answer it, she answered it thoughtlessly.  ’Of course he knows that he can do that.’

‘He says that he has been forbidden.’

’Oh, Mary, what am I to say to you?  You know it all, and I wonder that you can continue to question me in this way.’

‘Know all what?’

‘That I have been engaged to Captain Aylmer.’

‘But you are not engaged to him now.’

‘No I am not.’

‘And there can be no renewal there, I suppose?’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Not even for my brother would I say a word if I thought’

’No there is nothing of that; but If you cannot understand, I do not think that I can explain it.’  It seemed to Clara that her cousin, in her anxiety for her brother, did not conceive that a woman, even if she could suddenly transfer her affections from one man to another, could not bring herself to say that she had done so.

‘I must write to him today,’ said Mary, ’and I must give him some answer.  Shall I tell him that he had better not come here till you are gone?’

‘That will perhaps be best,’ said Clara.

‘Then he will never come at all.’

’I can go can go at once.  I will go at once.  You shall never have to say that my presence prevented his coming to his own house.  I ought not to be here.  I know it now.  I will go away, and you may tell him that I am gone.’

‘No, dear; you will not go.’

’Yes I must go.  I fancied things might be otherwise, because he once told me that he would be a brother to me.  And I said I would hold him to that not only because I want a brother so badly, but because I love him so dearly.  But it cannot be like that.’

‘You do not think that he will ever desert you?’

’But I will go away, so that he may come to his own house.  I ought not to be here.  Of course I ought not to be at Belton either in this house or in any other.  Tell him that I will be gone before he can come, and tell him also that I will not be too proud to accept from him what it may be fit that he should give me.  I have no one but him no one but him no one but him.’  Then she burst into tears, and throwing hack her head, covered her face with her hands.

Miss Belton, upon this, rose slowly from the chair on which she was sitting, and making her way painfully across to Clara, stood leaning on the weeping girl’s chair.  ‘You shall not go while I am here,’ she said.