"I do not know. I do not like tyranny."

Again he stood silent for awhile, looking at her, and then he
answered: "I should not tyrannise over you, Clara."

"Oh, Will, Will, do not speak like that. Do not destroy everything."

"What am I to say?"

"What would you say if your sister, your real sister, asked advice in
such a strait? If you had a sister, who came to you, and told you all
her difficulty, you would advise her. You would not say words to make
things worse for her."

"It would be very different."

"But you said you would be my brother."

"How am I to know what you feel for this man? It seems to me that you
half hate him, half fear him, and sometimes despise him."

"Hate him!--No, I never hate him."

"Go to him, then, and ask him what you had better do. Don't ask me."
Then he hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him. But
before he had half gone down the stairs he remembered the ceremony
at which he had just been present, and how desolate she was in the
world, and he returned to her. "I beg your pardon, Clara," he said,
"I am passionate; but I must be a beast to show my passion to you
on such a day as this. If I were you I should accept Lady Aylmer's
invitation,--merely thanking her for it in the ordinary way. I should
then go and see how the land lay. That is the advice I should give my
sister."

"And I will,--if it is only because you tell me.

"But as for a home,--tell her you have one of your own,--at Belton
Castle, from which no one can turn you out, and where no one can
intrude on you. This house belongs to you." Then, before she could
answer him, he had left the room; and she listened to his heavy quick
footsteps as he went across the hall and out of the front door.

He walked across the park and entered the little gate of Colonel
Askerton's garden, as though it were his habit to go to the cottage
when he was at Belton. There had been various matters on which the
two men had been brought into contact concerning the old squire's
death and the tenancy of the cottage, so that they had become almost
intimate. Belton had nothing new that he specially desired to say to
Colonel Askerton, whom, indeed, he had seen only a short time before
at the funeral; but he wanted the relief of speaking to some one
before he returned to the solitude of the inn at Redicote. On this
occasion, however, the Colonel was out, and the maid asked him if he
would see Mrs. Askerton. When he said something