"Will came here."
"Oh, papa, don't make difficulties. Of course that was different. He was here when he first thought of it. And even then he didn't think very much about it."
"He did all that he could, I suppose?"
"Well;—yes. I don't know how that might be." And Clara almost laughed as she felt the difficulties into which she was creeping. "Dear Will. He is much better as a cousin than as a husband."
"I don't see that at all. Captain Aylmer will not have the Belton estate or Plaistow Hall."
"Surely he is well enough off to take care of a wife. He will have the whole of the Perivale estate, you know."
"I don't know anything about it. According to my ideas of what is proper he should have spoken to me first. If he could not come he might have written. No doubt my ideas may be old-fashioned, and I'm told that Captain Aylmer is a fashionable young man."
"Indeed he is not, papa. He is a hard-working member of Parliament."
"I don't know that he is any better for that. People seem to think that if a man is a member of Parliament he may do what he pleases. There is Thompson, the member for Minehead, who has bought some sort of place out by the moors. I never saw so vulgar, pig-headed a fellow in my life. Being in Parliament used to be something when I was young, but it won't make a man a gentleman now-a-days. It seems to me that none but brewers, and tallow-chandlers, and lawyers go into Parliament now. Will Belton could go into Parliament if he pleased, but he knows better than that. He won't make himself such a fool."
This was not comfortable to Clara; but she knew her father, and allowed him to go on with his grumbling. He would come round by degrees, and he would appreciate, if he could not be induced to acknowledge, the wisdom of the step she was about to take.