On the first evening of their visit Captain Aylmer was very attentive to his aunt. He was quite alive to the propriety of such attentions, and to their expediency; and Clara was amused as she watched him while he sat by her side, by the hour together, answering little questions and making little remarks suited to the temperament of the old lady’s mind. She, herself, was hardly called upon to join in the conversation on that evening, and as she sat and listened, she could not but think that Will Belton would have been less adroit, but that he would also have been more straightforward. And yet why should not Captain Aylmer talk to his mat? Will Belton would also have talked to his aunt if he had one, but then he would have talked his own talk, and not his aunt’s talk. Clara could hardly make up her mind whether Captain Aylmer was or was not a sincere man. On the following day Aylmer was out all the morning, paying visits among his constituents, and at three o’clock he was to make his speech in the town-hall. Special places in the gallery were to be kept for Mrs Winterfield and her niece, and the old woman was quite resolved that she would be there. As the day advanced she became very fidgety, and at length she was quite alive to the perils of having to climb up the town-hall stairs; but she persevered, and at ten minutes before three she was seated in her place.

‘I suppose they will begin with prayer,’ she said to Clara. Clara, who knew nothing of the manner in which things were done at such meetings, said that she supposed so. A town councillor’s wife who sat on the other side of Mrs Winterfield here took the liberty of explaining that as the captain was going to talk politics there would be no prayers. ‘But they have prayers in the Houses of Parliament,’ said Mrs Winterfield, with much anger. To this the town councillor’s wife, who was almost silenced by the great lady’s wrath, said that indeed she did not know. After this Mrs Winterfield continued to hope for the best, till the platform was filled and the proceedings had commenced. Then she declared the present men of Perivale to be a godless set, and expressed herself very sorry that her nephew had ever had anything to do with them. ‘No good can come of it, my dear,’ she said. Clara from the beginning had feared that no good would come of her aunt’s visit to the town-hall.

The business was put on foot at once, and with some little flourishing at the commencement, Captain Aylmer made his speech the same speech which we have all heard and read so often, specially adapted to the meridian of Perivale. He was a Conservative, and of course he told his hearers that a good time was coming; that he and his family were really about to buckle themselves to the work, and that Perivale would hear things that would surprise it. The malt tax was to go, and the farmers were to have free trade in beer the arguments from the other side having come beautifully round in their appointed circle and old England was to be old England once again. He did the thing tolerably well, as such gentlemen usually do, and Perivale was contented with its Member, with the exception of one Perivalian. To Mrs Winterfield, sitting up there and listening with all her ears, it seemed that he had hitherto omitted all allusion to any subject that was worthy of mention. At last he said some word about the marriage and divorce court, condemning the iniquity of the present law, to which Perivale had opposed itself violently by petition and general meetings; and upon hearing this Mrs Winterfield had thumped with her umbrella, and faintly cheered him with her weak old voice. But the surrounding Perivalians had heard the cheer, and it was repeated backward and forwards through the room, till the Member’s aunt thought that it might be her nephew’s mission to annul that godless Act of Parliament and restore the matrimonial bonds of England to their old rigidity. When Captain Aylmer came out to hand her up to her little carriage, she patted him, and thanked him, and encouraged him; and on her way home she congratulated herself to Clara that she should have such a nephew to leave behind in her place.

Captain Aylmer was dining with the Mayor on that evening, and Mrs Winterfield was therefore able to indulge herself in talking about him. ‘I don’t see much of young men, of course,’ she said; ‘but I do not even hear of any that are like him.’ Again Clara thought of her cousin Will. Will was not at all like Frederic Aylmer; but was he not better? And yet, as she thought thus, she remembered that she had refused her cousin Will because she loved that very Frederic Aylmer whom her mind was thus condemning.

‘I’m sure he does his duty as a Member of Parliament very well,’ said Clara.

‘That alone would not be much; but when that is joined to so much that is better, it is a great deal. I am told that very few of the men in the House now are believers at all.’

‘Oh, aunt!’

‘It is terrible to think of, my dear.’

‘But, aunt; they have to take some oath, or something of that sort, to show that they are Christians.’

‘Not now, my dear. They’ve done away with all that since we had Jew members. An atheist can go into Parliament now; and I’m told that most of them are that, or nearly as bad. I can remember when no Papist could sit in Parliament. But they seem to me to be doing away with everything. It’s a great comfort to me that Frederic is what he is.’

‘I’m sure it must be, aunt.’

Then there was a pause, during which, however, Mrs Winterfield gave no sign that the conversation was to be considered as being over. Clara knew her aunt’s ways so well, that she was sure something more was coming, and therefore waited patiently, without any thought of taking up her book. ‘I was speaking to him about you yesterday,’ Mrs Winterfield said at last.

‘That would not interest him very much.’

‘Why not? Do you suppose he is not interested in those I love? Indeed, it did interest him; and he told me what I did not know before, and what you ought to have told me.’

Clara now blushed, she knew not why, and became agitated. ‘I don’t know that I have kept anything from you that I ought to have told,’ she said.

‘He says that the provision made for you by your father has all been squandered.’

‘If he used that word he has been very unkind,’ said Clara, angrily.

‘I don’t know what word he used, but he was not unkind at all; he never is. I think he was very generous.

‘I do not want his generosity, aunt,’

‘That is nonsense, my dear. If he has told me the truth, what have you to depend on?’

‘I don’t want to depend on anything. I hate hearing about it.’

‘Clara, I wonder you can talk in that way. If you were only seventeen it would be very foolish; but at your age it is inexcusable. When I am gone, and your father is gone, who is to provide for you? Will your cousin do it Mr Belton, who is to have the property?’

‘Yes, he would if I would let him of course I would not let him. But, aunt, pray do not go on. I would sooner have to starve than talk about it at all.’

There was another pause; but Clara again knew that the conversation was not over; and she knew also that it would be vain for her to endeavour to begin another subject. Nor could she think of anything else to say, so much was she agitated.

‘What makes you suppose that Mr Belton would be so liberal?’ asked Mrs Winterfield.

‘I don’t know. I can’t say. He is the nearest relation I shall have; and of all the people I ever knew he is the best, and the most generous, and the least selfish. When he came to us papa was quite hostile to him disliking his very name; but when the time came, papa could not bear to think of his going, because he had been so good.’

‘Clara!’

‘Well, aunt.’

‘I hope you know my affection for you.’

‘Of course I do, aunt; and I hope you trust mine for you also.’

‘Is there anything between you and Mr Belton besides cousinship?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Because if I thought that, my trouble would of course be at an end.’

‘There is nothing but pray do not lot me be a trouble to you.’ Clara, for a moment, almost resolved to tell her aunt the whole truth; but she remembered that she would be treating her cousin badly if she told the story of his rejection.

There was another short period of silence, and then Mrs Winterfield went on. ‘Frederic thinks that I should make some provision for you by will. That, of course, is the same as though he offered to do it himself. I told him that it would be so, and I read him my will last night. He said that that made no difference, and recommended me to add a codicil. I asked him how much I ought to give you, and he said fifteen hundred pounds. There will be as much as that after burying me without burden to the estate. You must acknowledge that he has been very generous.’

But Clara, in her heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for his generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing. It was grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare pittance to keep her out of the workhouse to him who had twice seemed to be on the point of asking her to share everything with him. She did not love her cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin Will’s assurance to her that he would treat her with a brother’s care was sweeter to her by far than Frederic Aylmer’s well-balanced counsel to his aunt on her behalf. In her present mood, too, she wanted no one to have fore. thought for her; she desired no provision; for her, in the discomfiture of heart, there was consolation in the feeling that when she should find herself alone in the world, she would have been ill-treated by her friends all round her. There was a charm in the prospect of her desolation of which she did not wish to be robbed by the assurance of some seventy pounds a year, to be given to her by Captain Frederic Aylmer. To be robbed of one’s grievance is the last and foulest wrong a wrong under which the most enduring temper will at last yield and become soured by which the strongest back will be broken. ‘Well, my dear,’ continued Mrs Winterfield, when Clara made no response to this appeal for praise.

‘It is so hard for me to say anything about it, aunt. What can I say but that I don’t want to be a burden to any one?’

‘That is a position which very few women can attain, that is, very few single women.’

‘I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the time they are thirty,’ said Clara with a fierce energy which absolutely frightened her aunt.

‘Clara! how can you say anything so wicked so abominably wicked?’

‘Anything would be better than being twitted in this way. How can I help it that I am not a man and able to work for my bread? But I am not above being a housemaid, and so Captain Aylmer shall find. I’d sooner be a housemaid, with nothing but my wages, than take the money which you say he is to give me. It will be of no use, aunt, for I shall not take it.’

‘It is I that am to leave it to you. It is not to be a present from Frederic.’

‘It is the same thing, aunt. He says you are to do it; and you told me just now that it was to come out of his pocket.’

‘I should have done it myself long ago, had you told me all the truth about your father’s affairs.’

‘How was I to tell you? I would sooner have bitten my tongue out. But I will tell you the truth now. If I had known that all this was to be said to me about money, and that our poverty was to be talked over between you and Captain Aylmer, I would not have come to Perivale. I would rather that you should be angry with me and think that I had forgotten you.’

‘You would not say that, Clara, if you remembered that this will probably be your last visit to me.’

‘No, no; it will not be the last. But do not talk about these things. And it will be so much better that I should be here when he is not here.’

‘I had hoped that when I died you might both be with me together as husband and wife.’

‘Such hopes never come to anything.’

‘I still think that he would wish it.’

‘That is nonsense, aunt. it is indeed, for neither of us wish it.’ A lie on such a subject from a woman under such circumstances is hardly to be considered a lie at all. It is spoken with no mean object, and is t............