"Of course I do, aunt; and I hope you trust mine for you also."
"Is there anything between you and Mr. Belton besides cousinship?"
"Nothing."
"Because if I thought that, my trouble would of course be at an end."
"There is nothing;—but pray do not let me be a trouble to you." Clara, for a moment, almost resolved to tell her aunt the whole truth; but she remembered that she would be treating her cousin badly if she told the story of his rejection.
There was another short period of silence, and then Mrs. Winterfield went on. "Frederic thinks that I should make some provision for you by will. That, of course, is the same as though he offered to do it himself. I told him that it would be so, and I read him my will last night. He said that that made no difference, and recommended me to add a codicil. I asked him how much I ought to give you, and he said fifteen hundred pounds. There will be as much as that after burying me without burden to the estate. You must acknowledge that he has been very generous."
But Clara, in her heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for his generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing. It was grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare pittance to keep her out of the workhouse,—to him who had twice seemed to be on the point of asking her to share everything with him. She did not love her cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin Will's assurance to her that he would treat her with a brother's care was sweeter to her by far than Frederic Aylmer's well-balanced counsel to his aunt on her behalf. In her present mood, too, she wanted no one to have forethought for her; she desired no provision; for her, in the discomfiture of heart, there was consolation in the feeling that when she should find herself alone in the world, she would have been ill-treated by her friends all round her. There was a charm in the prospect of her desolation of which she did not wish to be robbed by the assurance of some seventy pounds a year, to be given to her by Captain Frederic Aylmer. To be robbed of one's grievance is the last and foulest wrong,—a wrong under which the most enduring temper will at last yield and become soured,—by which the strongest back will be broken. "Well, my dear," continued Mrs. Winterfield, when Clara made no response to this appeal for praise.
"It is so hard for me to say anything about it, aunt. What can I say but that I don't want to be a burden to any one?"
"That is a position which very few women can attain,—that is, very few single women."
"I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the time they are thirty," said Clara with a fierce energy which absolutely frightened her aunt.