ng; "but
Mary thinks that you and your cousin might arrange it between you if
you were together."

"You must not listen to what she says about that, Colonel Askerton."

"Must I not? Well; I will not listen to more than I can help; but
Mary, as you know, is a persistent talker. I, at any rate, have done
my commission." Then Clara left him and was alone for what remained
of the afternoon.

It could not be, she said to herself, that the property ought to be
hers. It would make her miserable, were she once to feel that she had
accepted it. Some small allowance out of it, coming to her from the
brotherly love of her cousin,--some moderate stipend sufficient for
her livelihood, she thought she could accept from him. It seemed
to her that it was her destiny to be dependent on charity,--to eat
bread given to her from the benevolence of a friend; and she thought
that she could endure his benevolence better than that of any other.
Benevolence from Aylmer Park or from Perivale would be altogether
unendurable.

But why should it not be as Colonel Askerton had proposed? That this
cousin of hers loved her with all his heart,--with a constancy for
which she had at first given him no credit, she was well aware. And,
as regarded herself, she loved him better than all the world beside.
She had at last become conscious that she could not now marry Captain
Aylmer without sin,--without false vows, and fatal injury to herself
and him. To the prospect of that marriage, as her future fate, an
end must be put at any rate,--an end, if that which had already
taken place was not to be regarded as end enough. But yet she had
been engaged to Captain Aylmer,--was engaged to him even now. When
last her cousin had mentioned to her Captain Aylmer's name she had
declared that she loved him still. How then could she turn round
now, and so soon accept the love of another man? How could she bring
herself to let her cousin assume to himself the place of a lover,
when it was but the other day that she had rebuked him for expressing
the faintest hope in that direction?

But yet,--yet--! As for going to Plaistow, that was quite out of the
question.

"So you are to be the heiress after all," said Mrs. Askerton to her
that night in her bedroom.

"No; I am not to be the heiress after all," said Clara, rising
against her friend impetuously.

"You'll have to be lady of Belton in one way or the other at any
rate," said Mrs. Askerton.

CHAPTER XXVI