"I don't know that there is much difference; but, however—" Then they were in the dining-room, and as the servant remained there during dinner, there was nothing in their conversation worth repeating. After dinner they still remained down stairs, seating themselves on the two sides of the fire, Clara having fully resolved that she would not on such an evening as this leave Captain Aylmer to drink his glass of port wine by himself.
"I suppose I may stay with you, mayn't I?" she said.
"Oh, dear, yes; I'm sure I'm very much obliged. I'm not at all wedded to solitude." Then there was a slight pause.
"That's lucky," she said, "as you have made up your mind to be wedded in another sort of way." Her voice as she spoke was very low, but there was a gentle ring of restrained joyousness in it which ought to have gone at once to his heart and made him supremely blessed for the time.
"Well,—yes," he answered. "We are in for it now, both of us;—are we not? I hope you have no misgivings about it, Clara."
"Who? I? I have misgivings! No, indeed. I have no misgivings, Frederic; no doubts, no scruples, no alloy in my happiness. With me it is all as I would have it be. Ah; you haven't understood why it has been that I have seemed to be harsh to you when we have met."
"No, I have not," said he. This was true; but it is true also that it would have been well that he should be kept in his ignorance. She was minded, however, to tell him everything, and therefore she went on.
"I don't know how to tell you; and yet, circumstanced as we are now, it seems that I ought to tell you everything."
"Yes, certainly; I think that," said Aylmer. He was one of those men who consider themselves entitled to see, hear, and know every little detail of a woman's conduct, as a consequence of the circumstances of his engagement, and who consider themselves shorn of their privilege if anything be kept back. If any gentleman had said a soft word to Clara eight years ago, that soft word ought to be repeated to him now. I am afraid that these particular gentlemen sometimes hear some fibs; and I often wonder that their own early passages in the tournays of love do not warn them that it must be so. When James has sat deliciously through all the moonlit night with his arm round Mary's waist, and afterwards sees Mary led to the altar by John, does it not occur to him that some John may have also sat with his arm round Anna's waist,—that Anna whom he is leading to the altar? These things should not be inquired into too curiously; but the curiosity of some men on such matters has no end. For the most part, women like telling,—only they do not choose to be pressed beyond their own modes of utterance. "I should like to know that I have your full confidence," said he.
"You have got my full confidence," she replied.