ing no expenses; but you'll find even that close enough with your
seat in Parliament, and the necessity there is that you should be
half the year in London. Of course she won't go to London. She can't
expect it. All that had better be made quite clear at once." Hence
had come the letter about the house at Perivale, containing Lady
Aylmer's advice on that subject, as to which Clara made no reply.

Lady Aylmer, though she had given in her assent, was still not
altogether without hope. It might be possible that the two young
people could be brought to see the folly and error of their ways
before it would be too late; and that Lady Aylmer, by a judicious
course of constant advice, might be instrumental in opening the eyes,
if not of the lady, at any rate of the gentleman. She had great
reliance on her own powers, and knew well that a falling drop will
hollow a stone. Her son manifested no hot eagerness to complete his
folly in a hurry, and to cut the throat of his prospects out of hand.
Time, therefore, would be allowed to her, and she was a woman who
could use time with patience. Having, through her son, despatched her
advice about the house at Perivale,--which simply amounted to this,
that Clara should expressly state her willingness to live there alone
whenever it might suit her husband to be in London or elsewhere,--she
went to work on other points connected with the Amedroz family, and
eventually succeeded in learning something very much like the truth
as to poor Mrs. Askerton and her troubles. At first she was so
comfortably horror-stricken by the iniquity she had unravelled,--so
delightfully shocked and astounded,--as to believe that the facts as
they then stood would suffice to annul the match.

"You don't tell me," she said to Belinda, "that Frederic's wife
will have been the friend of such a woman as that!" And Lady Aylmer,
sitting up-stairs with her household books before her, put up her
great fat hands and her great fat arms, and shook her head,--front
and all,--in most satisfactory dismay.

"But I suppose Clara did not know it." Belinda had considered it to
be an act of charity to call Miss Amedroz Clara since the family
consent had been given.

"Didn't know it! They have been living in that sort of way that they
must have been confidantes in everything. Besides, I always hold that
a woman is responsible for her female friends."

"I think if she consents to drop her at once,--that is, absolutely
to make a