"No;—why should I be angry with you? Of course I knew it all without any showing. Do not tell Colonel Askerton, or they will be killing each other."
"Of course I shall not tell Colonel Askerton; but I could not help showing this to you."
"And you will meet him?"
"Yes; I shall meet him. What else can I do?"
"Unless, indeed, you were to write and tell him that it would do no good."
"It will be better that he should come."
"If you allow him to talk you over you will be a wretched woman all your life."
"It will be better that he should come," said Clara again. And then she wrote to Captain Aylmer at Perivale, telling him that she would be at the house at the hour he had named, on the day he had named.
When that day came she walked across the park a little before the time fixed, not wishing to meet Captain Aylmer before she had reached the house. It was now nearly the middle of April, and the weather was soft and pleasant. It was almost summer again, and as she felt this, she thought of all the events which had occurred since the last summer,—of their agony of grief at the catastrophe which had closed her brother's life, of her aunt's death first, and then of her father's following so close upon the other, and of the two offers of marriage made to her,—as to which she was now aware that she had accepted the wrong man and rejected the wrong man. She was steadily minded, now, at this moment, that before she parted from Captain Aylmer, her engagement with him should be brought to a close. Now, at this coming interview, so much at any rate should be done. She had tried to make herself believe that she felt for him that sort of affection which a woman should have for the man she is to marry, but she had failed. She hardly knew whether she had in truth ever loved him; but she was quite sure that she did not love him now. No;—she had done with Aylmer Park, and she could feel thankful, amidst all her troubles, that that difficulty should vex her no more. In showing Captain Aylmer's letter to Mrs. Askerton she had made no such promise as this, but her mind had been quite made up. "He certainly shall not talk me over," she said to herself as she walked across the park.
But she could not see her way so clearly out of that further difficulty with regard to her cousin. It might be that she would be able to rid herself of the one lover with comparative ease; but she could not bring herself to entertain the idea of accepting the other. It was true that this man longed for her,—desired to call her his own, with a wearing, anxious, painful desire which made his heart grievously heavy,—heavy as though with lead hanging to its strings; and it was true that Clara knew that it was so. It was true also that his spirit had mastered her spirit, and that his persistence had conquered her resistance,—the resistance, that is, of her feelings. But there remained with her a feminine shame, which made it seem to her to be impossible that she should now reject Captain Aylmer, and as a consequence of that rejection, accept Will Belton's hand. As she thought of this, she could not see her way out of her trouble in that direction with any of that clearness which belonged to her in reference to Captain Aylmer.