rly, "or what he is called? I will never set my eyes upon his
children, nor yet upon the place when he has become the master of
it." Clara wrote both to her cousin and to the lawyer, repeating
her assurance,--with great violence, as Lady Aylmer would have
said,--that she would have nothing to do with the Belton estate. She
told Mr. Green that it would be useless for him to draw up any deeds.
"It can't be made mine unless I choose to have it," she said, "and I
don't choose to have it." Then there came upon her a terrible fear.
What if she should marry Captain Aylmer after all; and what if he,
when he should be her husband, should take the property on her
behalf! Something must be done before her marriage to prevent the
possibility of such results,--something as to the efficacy of which
for such prevention she could feel altogether certain.

But could she marry Captain Aylmer at all in her present mood? During
these three weeks she was unconsciously teaching herself to hope that
she might be relieved from her engagement. She did not love him. She
was becoming aware that she did not love him. She was beginning to
doubt whether, in truth, she had ever loved him. But yet she felt
that she could not escape from her engagement if he should show
himself to be really actuated by any fixed purpose to carry it out;
nor could she bring herself to be so weak before Lady Aylmer as to
seem to yield. The necessity of not striking her colours was forced
upon her by the warfare to which she was subjected. She was unhappy,
feeling that her present position in life was bad, and unworthy of
her. She could have brought herself almost to run away from Aylmer
Park, as a boy runs away from school, were it not that she had no
place to which to run. She could not very well make her appearance
at Plaistow Hall, and say that she had come there for shelter and
succour. She could, indeed, go to Mrs. Askerton's cottage for awhile;
and the more she thought of the state of her affairs, the more did
she feel sure that that would, before long, be her destiny. It must
be her destiny,--unless Captain Aylmer should return at Easter with
purposes so firmly fixed that even his mother should not be able to
prevail against them.

And now, in these days, circumstances gave her a new friend,--or
perhaps, rather, a new acquaintance, where she certainly had looked
neither for the one or for the other. Lady Aylmer and Belinda and the
carriage and the horses used, a