, and that in any answer she might give she must acknowledge
the fact. "I do not think," she said, "that it is considered fair to
gentlemen to tell such stories as that."

"Then I can only say that the young ladies I have known are generally
very unfair."

"But who told you?"

"Who told me? My maid. Of course she got it from yours. Those things
are always known."

"Poor Will!"

"Poor Will, indeed. He is coming here again, I hear, almost
immediately, and it needn't be 'poor Will' unless you like it. But as
for me, I am not going to be an advocate in his favour. I tell you
fairly that I did not like what little I saw of poor Will."

"I like him of all things."

"You should teach him to be a little more courteous in his demeanour
to ladies; that is all. I will tell you something else, too, about
poor Will--but not now. Some other day I will tell you something of
your cousin Will."

Clara did not care to ask any questions as to this something that was
to be told, and therefore took her leave and went away.

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN THE COUNTRY.

Clara Amedroz had made one great mistake about her cousin, Will
Belton, when she came to the conclusion that she might accept his
proffered friendship without any apprehension that the friend would
become a lover; and she made another, equally great, when she
convinced herself that his love had been as short-lived as it had
been eager. Throughout his journey back to Plaistow, he had thought
of nothing else but his love, and had resolved to persevere, telling
himself sometimes that he might perhaps be successful, and feeling
sure at other times that he would encounter renewed sorrow and
permanent disappointment,--but equally resolved in either mood that
he would persevere. Not to persevere in pursuit of any desired
object,--let the object be what it might,--was, to his thinking,
unmanly, weak, and destructive of self-respect. He would sometimes
say of himself, joking with other men, that if he did not succeed in
this or that thing, he could never speak to himself again. To no man
did he talk of his love in such a strain as this; but there was a
woman to whom he spoke of it; and though he could not joke on such a
matter, the purport of what he said showed the same feeling. To be
finally rejected, and to put up with such rejection, would make him
almost contemptible in his own eyes.

This woman was his sister, Mary Belton. Something has