er cousin. But he had in truth been too much distressed by the
ill news as to Mrs. Winterfield's will to be able to rally himself,
and the evening that was spent up in his room was very comfortless
to both of them. Clara had her own sorrows to bear as well as her
father's, and could take no pleasant look out into the world of her
own circumstances, She had gained her lover merely to lose him,--and
had lost him under circumstances that were very painful to her
woman's feeling. Though he had been for one night betrothed to her as
her husband, he had never loved her. He had asked her to be his wife
simply in fulfilment of a death-bed promise! The more she thought
of it the more bitter did the idea of it become to her. And she
could not also but think of her cousin. Poor Will! He, at any rate,
had loved her, though his eagerness in love had been, as she told
herself, but short-lived. As she thought of him, it seemed but the
other day that he had been with her up on the rock in the park;--but
as she thought of Captain Aylmer, to whom she had become engaged only
yesterday, and from whom she had separated herself only that morning,
she felt that an eternity of time had passed since she had parted
from him.

On the following day, a dull, dark, melancholy day, towards the end
of November, she went out to saunter about the park, leaving her
father still in his bedroom, and after a while made her way down to
the cottage. She found Mrs. Askerton as usual alone in the little
drawing-room, sitting near the window with a book in her hand; but
Clara knew at once that her friend had not been reading,--that she
had been sitting there looking out upon the clouds, with her mind
fixed upon things far away. The general cheerfulness of this woman
had often been cause of wonder to Clara, who knew how many of her
hours were passed in solitude; but there did occasionally come upon
her periods of melancholy in which she was unable to act up to the
settled rule of her life, and in which she would confess that the
days and weeks and months were too long for her.

"So you are back," said Mrs. Askerton, as soon as the first greeting
was over.

"Yes; I am back."

"I supposed you would not stay there long after the funeral."

"No; what good could I do?"

"And Captain Aylmer is still there, I suppose?"

"I left him at Perivale."

There was a slight pause, as Mrs. Askerton hesitated before she asked
her next question. "May I be told anything a