and so it is true that there are some men who are heroes; but such are exceptions both among men and women.  Not such a one had Mrs Askerton been.  Calamity had come upon her partly, indeed, by her own fault, though that might have been pardoned but the weight of her misfortunes had been too great for her strength, and she had become in some degree hardened by what she had endured; if not unfeminine, still she was feminine in an inferior degree, with womanly feelings of a lower order.  And she had learned to intrigue, not being desirous of gaining aught by dishonest intriguing, but believing that she could only hold her own by carrying on her battle after that fashion.  In all this I am speaking of the general character of the woman, and am not alluding to the one sin which she had committed.  Thus, when she had first become acquainted with Miss Amedroz, her conscience had not rebuked her in that she was deceiving her new friend.  When asked casually in conversation as to her maiden name, she had not blushed as she answered the question with a falsehood.  When, unfortunately, the name of her first husband had in some way made itself known to Clara, she had been ready again with some prepared fib.  And when she had recognized William Belton, she had thought that the danger to herself of having any one near her who might know her quite justified her in endeavouring to create ill-will between Clara and her cousin.  ‘Self-preservation is the first law of nature,’ she would have said; and would have failed to remember, as she did always fail to remember that nature does not require by any of its laws that self-preservation should be aided by falsehood.

But though she was not high-minded, so also was she not ungenerous; and now, as she began to understand that Clara was sacrificing herself because of that promise which had been given when they two had stood together at the window in the cottage drawing-room, she was capable of feeling more for her friend than for herself.  She was capable even of telling herself that it was cruel on her part even to wish for any continuance of Clara’s acquaintance.  ’I have made my bed, and I must lie upon it,’ she said to herself; and then she resolved that, instead of going up to the house on the following day, she would write to Clara, and put an end to the intimacy which existed between them.  ’The world is hard, and harsh, and unjust,’ she said, still speaking to herself.  ’But that is not her fault; I will not injure her because I have been injured myself.’

Colonel Askerton was up at the house on the same day, but he did not ask for Miss Amedroz, nor did she see him.  Nobody else came to the house then, or on the following morning, or on that afternoon, though Clara did not fail to tell herself that Captain Aylmer might have been there if he had chosen to take the journey and to leave home as soon as he had received the message; and she made the same calculation as to her Cousin Will though in that calculation, as we know, she was wrong.  These two days had been very desolate with her, and she had begun to look forward to Mrs Askerton’s coming when instead of that there came a messenger with a letter from the cottage.