never care about things
getting cold. It is gentlemen only who have feelings in such matters
as that."

"I don't know that there is much difference; but, however--" Then
they were in the dining-room, and as the servant remained there
during dinner, there was nothing in their conversation worth
repeating. After dinner they still remained down stairs, seating
themselves on the two sides of the fire, Clara having fully resolved
that she would not on such an evening as this leave Captain Aylmer to
drink his glass of port wine by himself.

"I suppose I may stay with you, mayn't I?" she said.

"Oh, dear, yes; I'm sure I'm very much obliged. I'm not at all wedded
to solitude." Then there was a slight pause.

"That's lucky," she said, "as you have made up your mind to be wedded
in another sort of way." Her voice as she spoke was very low, but
there was a gentle ring of restrained joyousness in it which ought to
have gone at once to his heart and made him supremely blessed for the
time.

"Well,--yes," he answered. "We are in for it now, both of us;--are we
not? I hope you have no misgivings about it, Clara."

"Who? I? I have misgivings! No, indeed. I have no misgivings,
Frederic; no doubts, no scruples, no alloy in my happiness. With me
it is all as I would have it be. Ah; you haven't understood why it
has been that I have seemed to be harsh to you when we have met."

"No, I have not," said he. This was true; but it is true also that it
would have been well that he should be kept in his ignorance. She was
minded, however, to tell him everything, and therefore she went on.

"I don't know how to tell you; and yet, circumstanced as we are now,
it seems that I ought to tell you everything."

"Yes, certainly; I think that," said Aylmer. He was one of those men
who consider themselves entitled to see, hear, and know every little
detail of a woman's conduct, as a consequence of the circumstances of
his engagement, and who consider themselves shorn of their privilege
if anything be kept back. If any gentleman had said a soft word to
Clara eight years ago, that soft word ought to be repeated to him
now. I am afraid that these particular gentlemen sometimes hear
some fibs; and I often wonder that their own early passages in the
tournays of love do not warn them that it must be so. When James has
sat deliciously through all the moonlit night with his arm round
Mary's waist, and afterwards sees Mary led to the altar by John, does