"Has he got plenty of money?"
"Oh, plenty! At least, I think so. He says that he has."
"The idea of any man owning that he had got plenty of money! What a happy mortal! And then to be handsome, and omnipotent, and to understand cattle and fields! One would strive to emulate him rather than envy him, had not one learned to acknowledge that it is not given to every one to get to Corinth."
"You may laugh at him, but you'd like him if you knew him."
"One never can be sure of that from a lady's account of a man. When a man talks to me about another man, I can generally tell whether I should like him or not—particularly if I know the man well who is giving the description; but it is quite different when a woman is the describer."
"You mean that you won't take my word?"
"We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your cousin is a worthy man—and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor in his prosperous days;—but probably if he and I came together we shouldn't have a word to say to each other."
Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were they two to meet in her presence,—the captain and the farmer,—she felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the two, though she knew also that she could not love him as she loved the other.
Then they changed the subject of their conversation, and discussed Mrs. Winterfield, as they had often done before. Captain Aylmer had said that he should return to London on the Saturday, the present day being Tuesday, and Clara accused him of escaping always from the real hard work of his position. "I observe that you never stay a Sunday at Perivale," she said.
"Well;—not often. Why should I? Sunday is just the day that people like to be at home."