d Clara had told herself that Captain Aylmer had no
special feeling in her favour. She had told herself this, ever since
that journey together from Perivale to Taunton; but never till now
had she also confessed to herself what was her own case.

She made a comparison between the two men. Her cousin Will was, she
thought, the more generous, the more energetic,--perhaps, by nature,
the man of the higher gifts. In person he was undoubtedly the
superior. He was full of noble qualities;--forgetful of self,
industrious, full of resources, a very man of men, able to command,
eager in doing work for others' good and his own,--a man altogether
uncontaminated by the coldness and selfishness of the outer world.
But he was rough, awkward, but indifferently educated, and with few
of those tastes which to Clara Amedroz were delightful. He could
not read poetry to her, he could not tell her of what the world of
literature was doing now or of what it had done in times past. He
knew nothing of the inner world of worlds which governs the world.
She doubted whether he could have told her who composed the existing
cabinet, or have given the name of a single bishop beyond the see in
which his own parish was situated. But Captain Aylmer knew everybody,
and had read everything, and understood, as though by instinct, all
the movements of the world in which he lived.

But what mattered any such comparison? Even though she should be able
to prove to herself beyond the shadow of a doubt that her cousin Will
was of the two the fitter to be loved,--the one more worthy of her
heart,--no such proof could alter her position. Love does not go by
worth. She did not love her cousin as she must love any man to whom
she could give her hand,--and, alas! she did love that other man.

On this night I doubt whether Belton did slumber with that solidity
of repose which was usual to him. At any rate, before he came down in
the morning he had found time for sufficient thought, and had brought
himself to a resolution. He would not give up the battle as lost. To
his thinking there was something weak and almost mean in abandoning
any project which he had set before himself. He had been awkward, and
he exaggerated to himself his own awkwardness. He had been hasty, and
had gone about his task with inconsiderate precipitancy. It might be
that he had thus destroyed all his chance of success. But, as he said
to himself, "he would never say die, as long as there was a p