hing to meet Captain Aylmer before she had reached
the house. It was now nearly the middle of April, and the weather was
soft and pleasant. It was almost summer again, and as she felt this,
she thought of all the events which had occurred since the last
summer,--of their agony of grief at the catastrophe which had closed
her brother's life, of her aunt's death first, and then of her
father's following so close upon the other, and of the two offers of
marriage made to her,--as to which she was now aware that she had
accepted the wrong man and rejected the wrong man. She was steadily
minded, now, at this moment, that before she parted from Captain
Aylmer, her engagement with him should be brought to a close. Now,
at this coming interview, so much at any rate should be done. She
had tried to make herself believe that she felt for him that sort of
affection which a woman should have for the man she is to marry, but
she had failed. She hardly knew whether she had in truth ever loved
him; but she was quite sure that she did not love him now. No;--she
had done with Aylmer Park, and she could feel thankful, amidst all
her troubles, that that difficulty should vex her no more. In showing
Captain Aylmer's letter to Mrs. Askerton she had made no such promise
as this, but her mind had been quite made up. "He certainly shall not
talk me over," she said to herself as she walked across the park.

But she could not see her way so clearly out of that further
difficulty with regard to her cousin. It might be that she would be
able to rid herself of the one lover with comparative ease; but she
could not bring herself to entertain the idea of accepting the other.
It was true that this man longed for her,--desired to call her his
own, with a wearing, anxious, painful desire which made his heart
grievously heavy,--heavy as though with lead hanging to its strings;
and it was true that Clara knew that it was so. It was true also that
his spirit had mastered her spirit, and that his persistence had
conquered her resistance,--the resistance, that is, of her feelings.
But there remained with her a feminine shame, which made it seem to
her to be impossible that she should now reject Captain Aylmer, and
as a consequence of that rejection, accept Will Belton's hand. As
she thought of this, she could not see her way out of her trouble in
that direction with any of that clearness which belonged to her in
reference to Captain Aylmer.

She had been an