bout the will?" she said.

"The weary will! If you knew how I hated the subject you would not
ask me. But you must not think I hate it because it has given me
nothing."

"Given you nothing?"

"Nothing! But that does not make me hate it. It is the nature of the
subject that is so odious. I have now told you all,--everything that
there is to be told, though we were to talk for a week. If you are
generous you will not say another word about it."

"But I am so sorry."

"There,--that's it. You won't perceive that the expression of such
sorrow is a personal injury to me. I don't want you to be sorry."

"How am I to help it?"

"You need not express it. I don't come pitying you for supposed
troubles. You have plenty of money; but if you were so poor that you
could eat nothing but cold mutton, I shouldn't condole with you as to
the state of your larder. I should pretend to think that poultry and
piecrust were plentiful with you."

"No, you wouldn't, dear;--not if I were as dear to you as you are to
me."

"Well, then, be sorry; and let there be an end of it. Remember how
much of all this I must of necessity have to go through with poor
papa."

"Ah, yes; I can believe that."

"And he is so far from well. Of course you have not seen him since
I have been gone."

"No; we never see him unless he comes up to the gate there." Then
there was another pause for a moment. "And what about Captain
Aylmer?" asked Mrs. Askerton.

"Well;--what about him?"

"He is the heir now?"

"Yes;--he is the heir."

"And that is all?"

"Yes; that is all. What more should there be? The poor old house at
Perivale will be shut up, I suppose."

"I don't care about the old house much, as it is not to be your
house."

"No;--it is not to be my house certainly."

"There were two ways in which it might have become yours."

"Though there were ten ways, none of those ways have come my way,"
said Clara.

"Of course I know that you are so close that though there were
anything to tell you would not tell it."

"I think I would tell you anything that was proper to be told; but
now there is nothing proper,--or improper."

"Was it proper or improper when Mr. Belton made an offer to you,--as
I knew he would do, of course; as I told you that he would? Was that
so improper that it could not be told?"

Clara was aware that the tell-tale colour in her face at once took
from her the possibility of even pretending that the allegation was
untrue