"At any rate we need not speak of it. Why should we talk on a subject which is simply uncomfortable, and which we cannot mend?"
"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" And now he swayed himself backwards and forwards in his chair, bewailing his own condition and hers, and his past imprudence, while the tears ran down his cheeks. She still knelt there at his feet, looking up into his face with loving, beseeching eyes, praying him to be comforted, and declaring that all would still be well if he would only forget the subject, or, at any rate, cease to speak of it. But still he went on wailing, complaining of his lot as a child complains, and refusing all consolation. "Yes; I know," said he, "it has all been my fault. But how could I help it? What was I to do?"
"Papa, nobody has said that anything was your fault; nobody has thought so."
"I never spent anything on myself—never, never; and yet,—and yet,—and yet—!"
"Look at it with more courage, papa. After all, what harm will it be if I should have to go out and earn my own bread like any other young woman? I am not afraid."
At last he wept himself into an apathetic tranquillity, as though he had at present no further power for any of the energy of grief; and she left him while she went about the house and learned how things had gone on during her absence. It seemed, from the tidings which the servant gave her, that he had been ill almost since she had been gone. He had, at any rate, chosen to take his meals in his own room, and as far as was remembered, had not once left the house since she had been away. He had on two or three occasions spoken of Mr. Belton, appearing to be anxious for his coming, and asking questions as to the cattle and the work that was still going on about the place; and Clara, when she returned to his room, tried to interest him again about her cousin. But he had in truth been too much distressed by the ill news as to Mrs. Winterfield's will to be able to rally himself, and the evening that was spent up in his room was very comfortless to both of them. Clara had her own sorrows to bear as well as her father's, and could take no pleasant look out into the world of her own circumstances. She had gained her lover merely to lose him,—and had lost him under circumstances that were very painful to her woman's feeling. Though he had been for one night betrothed to her as her husband, he had never loved her. He had asked her to be his wife simply in fulfilment of a death-bed promise! The more she thought of it the more bitter did the idea of it become to her. And she could not also but think of her cousin. Poor Will! He, at any rate, had loved her, though his eagerness in love had been, as she told herself, but short-lived. As she thought of him, it seemed but the other day that he had been with her up on the rock in the park;—but as she thought of Captain Aylmer, to whom she had become engaged only yesterday, and from whom she had separated herself only that morning, she felt that an eternity of time had passed since she had parted from him.
On the following day, a dull, dark, melancholy day, towards the end of November, she went out to saunter about the park, leaving her father still in his bedroom, and after a while made her way down to the cottage. She found Mrs. Askerton as usual alone in the little drawing-room, sitting near the window with a book in her hand; but Clara knew at once that her friend had not been reading,—that she had been sitting there looking out upon the clouds, with her mind fixed upon things far away. The general cheerfulness of this woman had often been cause of wonder to Clara, who knew how many of her hours were passed in solitude; but there did occasionally come upon her periods of melancholy in which she was unable to act up to the settled rule of her life, and in which she would confess that the days and weeks and months were too long for her.
"So you are back," said Mrs. Askerton, as soon as the first greeting was over.
"Yes; I am back."
"I supposed you would not stay there long after the funeral."