marrying and keeping up one's name in the county
respectably! What do I care for the county? D---- the county! I often
wish that I'd been a younger son,--as you are."

Captain Aylmer had no answer to make to all this. It was, no doubt,
the fact that age and good living had made Sir Anthony altogether
incapable of enjoying the kind of life which he desiderated, and that
he would probably have eaten and drunk himself into his grave long
since had that kind of life been within his reach. This, however,
the son could not explain to the father. But in fitting, as he
endeavoured to do, his father's words to his own case, Captain
Aylmer did perceive that a bachelor's life might perhaps be the
most suitable to his own peculiar case. Only he would do nothing
unhandsome. As to that he was quite resolved. Of course Clara must
show herself to be in some degree amenable to reason and to the
ordinary rules of the world; but he was aware that his mother was
hot-tempered, and he generously made up his mind that he would give
Miss Amedroz even yet another chance.

At the hotel in London Clara found a short note from Mrs. Askerton,
in which she was warmly assured that everything should be done to
make her comfortable at the cottage as long as she should wish to
stay there. But the very warmth of affection thus expressed made
her almost shrink from what she was about to do. Mrs. Askerton was
no doubt anxious for her coming; but would her cousin Will Belton
approve of the visit; and what would her cousin Mary say about it?
If she was being driven into this step against her own approval, by
the insolence of Lady Aylmer,--if she was doing this thing simply
because Lady Aylmer had desired her not to do it, and was doing it in
opposition to the wishes of the man she had promised to marry as well
as to her own judgment, there could not but be cause for shrinking.
And yet she believed that she was right. If she could only have had
some one to tell her,--some one in whom she could trust implicitly to
direct her! She had hitherto been very much prone to rebel against
authority. Against her aunt she had rebelled, and against her father,
and against her lover. But now she wished with all her heart that
there might be some one to whom she could submit with perfect faith.
If she could only know what her cousin Will would think. In him she
thought she could have trusted with that perfect faith;--if only he
would have been a brother to her.

But it