reserve, all my feeling.
When I came to find that I had been mistaken, I conceived myself
bound by my engagement to rectify my own error as best I could; and I
resolved, wrongly,--as I now think, very wrongly,--that I could learn
as your wife to love you. Then came circumstances which showed me
that a release would be good for both of us, and which justified me
in accepting it. No girl could be bound by any engagement to a man
who looked on and saw her treated in his own home, by his own mother,
as you saw me treated at Aylmer Park. I claim to be released myself,
and I know that this release is as good for you as it is for me."

"I am the best judge of that."

"For myself at any rate I will judge. For myself I have decided. Now
I have answered the questions which you asked me as to my love for
yourself. To that other question which you have thought fit to put
to me about my cousin, I refuse to give any answer whatsoever." Then,
having said so much, she walked out of the room, closing the door
behind her, and left him standing there alone.

We need not follow her as she went up, almost mechanically, into her
own room,--the room that used to be her own,--and then shut herself
in, waiting till she should be assured, first by sounds in the house,
and then by silence, that he was gone. That she fell away greatly
from the majesty of her demeanour when she was thus alone, and
descended to the ordinary ways of troubled females, we may be quite
sure. But to her there was no further difficulty. Her work for the
day was done. In due time she would take herself to the cottage, and
all would be well, or, at any rate, comfortable with her. But what
was he to do? How was he to get himself out of the house, and take
himself back to London? While he had been in pursuit of her, and
when he was leaving his vehicle at the public-house in the village
of Belton, he,--like some other invading generals,--had failed to
provide adequately for his retreat. When he was alone he took a turn
or two about the room, half thinking that Clara would return to him.
She could hardly leave him alone in a strange house,--him, who, as he
had twice told her, had come all the way from Yorkshire to see her.
But she did not return, and gradually he came to understand that he
must provide for his own retreat without assistance. He was hardly
aware, even now, how greatly he had transcended his usual modes of
speech and action, both in the energy of his supplicat