have it all settled at
once, and so I wanted to have it off my mind."

"I don't know what I ought to say to you. Of course I shall not want
so much money as that."

"We won't talk about the money any more to-day. I hate talking about
money."

"It is not the pleasantest subject in the world."

"No," said he; "no indeed. I hate it,--particularly between friends.
So you have come to grief with your friends, the Aylmers?"

"I hope I haven't come to grief,--and the Aylmers, as a family, never
were my friends. I'm obliged to contradict you, point by point,--you
see."

"I don't like Captain Aylmer at all," said Will, after a pause.

"So I saw Will; and I dare say he was not very fond of you."

"Fond of me! I didn't want him to be fond of me. I don't suppose he
ever thought much about me. I could not help thinking of him."--She
had nothing to say to this, and therefore walked on silently by his
side. "I suppose he has not any idea of coming back here again?"

"What; to Belton? No, I do not think he will come to Belton any
more."

"Nor will you go to Aylmer Park?"

"No; certainly not. Of all the places on earth, Will, to which you
could send me, Aylmer Park is the one to which I should go most
unwillingly."

"I don't want to send you there."

"You never could be made to understand what a woman she is; how
disagreeable, how cruel, how imperious, how insolent."

"Was she so bad as all that?"

"Indeed she was, Will. I can't but tell the truth to you."

"And he was nearly as bad as she."

"No, Will; no; do not say that of him."

"He was such a quarrelsome fellow. He flew at me just because I said
we had good hunting down in Norfolk."

"We need not talk about all that, Will."

"No;--of course not. It's all passed and gone, I suppose."

"Yes;--it is all passed and gone. You did not know my Aunt
Winterfield, or you would understand my first reason for liking him."

"No," said Will; "I never saw her."

Then they walked on together for a while without speaking, and Clara
was beginning to feel some relief,--some relief at first; but as
the relief came, there came back to her the dead, dull, feeling of
heaviness at her heart which had oppressed her after his visit in the
morning. She had been right, and Mrs. Askerton had been wrong. He had
returned to her simply as her cousin, and now he was walking with her
and talking to her in this strain, to teach her that it was so. But
of a sudden they came to a place w