ted Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she
knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were
they two to meet in her presence,--the captain and the farmer,--she
felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the
better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the
two, though she knew also that she could not love him as she loved
the other.

Then they changed the subject of their conversation, and discussed
Mrs. Winterfield, as they had often done before. Captain Aylmer had
said that he should return to London on the Saturday, the present day
being Tuesday, and Clara accused him of escaping always from the real
hard work of his position. "I observe that you never stay a Sunday at
Perivale," she said.

"Well;--not often. Why should I? Sunday is just the day that people
like to be at home."

"I should have thought it would not have made much difference to a
bachelor in that way."

"But Sunday is a day that one specially likes to pass after one's own
fashion."

"Exactly;--and therefore you don't stay with my aunt. I understand it
all completely."

"Now you mean to be ill-natured!"

"I mean to say that I don't like Sundays at Perivale at all, and that
I should do just as you do if I had the power. But women,--women,
that is, of my age,--are such slaves! We are forced to give an
obedience for which we can see no cause, and for which we can
understand no necessity. I couldn't tell my aunt that I meant to go
away on Saturday."

"You have no business which makes imperative calls upon your time."

"That means that I can't plead pretended excuses. But the true reason
is that we are dependent."

"There is something in that, I suppose."

"Not that I am dependent on her. But my position generally is
dependent, and I cannot assist myself."

Captain Aylmer found it difficult to make any answer to this, feeling
the subject to be one which could hardly be discussed between him and
Miss Amedroz. He not unnaturally looked to be the heir of his aunt's
property, and any provision made out of that property for Clara,
would so far lessen that which would come to him. For anything that
he knew, Mrs. Winterfield might leave everything she possessed to
her niece. The old lady had not been open and candid to him whom she
meant to favour in her will, as she had been to her to whom no such
favour was to be shown. But Captain Aylmer did know, with tolerable
accuracy, wha