t was the state of affairs at Belton, and was aware
that Miss Amedroz had no prospect of maintenance on which to depend,
unless she could depend on her aunt. She was now pleading that she
was not dependent on that lady, and Captain Aylmer felt that she was
wrong. He was a man of the world, and was by no means inclined to
abandon any right that was his own; but it seemed to him that he
was almost bound to say some word to show that in his opinion Clara
should hold herself bound to comply with her aunt's requirements.

"Dependence is a disagreeable word," he said; "and one never quite
knows what it means."

"If you were a woman you'd know. It means that I must stay at
Perivale on Sundays, while you can go up to London or down to
Yorkshire. That's what it means."

"What you do mean, I think, is this;--that you owe a duty to
your aunt, the performance of which is not altogether agreeable.
Nevertheless it would be foolish in you to omit it."

"It isn't that;--not that at all. It would not be foolish, not in
your sense of the word, but it would be wrong. My aunt has been kind
to me, and therefore I am bound to her for this service. But she is
kind to you also, and yet you are not bound. That's why I complain.
You sail away under false pretences, and yet you think you do your
duty. You have to see your lawyer,--which means going to your club;
or to attend to your tenants,--which means hunting and shooting."

"I haven't got any tenants."

"You know very well that you could remain over Sunday without doing
any harm to anybody;--only you don't like going to church three
times, and you don't like hearing my aunt read a sermon afterwards.
Why shouldn't you stay, and I go to the club?"

"With all my heart, if you can manage it."

"But I can't; we ain't allowed to have clubs, or shooting, or to
have our own way in anything, putting forward little pretences about
lawyers."

"Come, I'll stay if you'll ask me."

"I'm sure I won't do that. In the first place you'd go to sleep, and
then she would be offended; and I don't know that your sufferings
would make mine any lighter. I'm not prepared to alter the ways of
the world, but I feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes."

Mrs. Winterfield inhabited a large brick house in the centre of the
town. It had a long frontage to the street; for there was not only
the house itself, with its three square windows on each side of the
door, and its seven windows over that, and ag