‘He means to be here soon,’ said Mary.

’Oh, indeed!

‘He speaks of being here next week.’

For a moment or two Clara had yielded to the agitation caused by her cousin’s tidings; but with a little gush she recovered her presence of mind, and was able to speak with all the hypocritical propriety of a female.  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ she said.  ’It is only right that he should come.’

‘He has asked me to say a word to you as to the purport of his journey.’

Then again Clara’s courage and hypocrisy were so far subdued that they were not able to maintain her in a position adequate to the occasion.  ‘Well,’ she said laughing, ’what is the word?  I hope it is not that I am to pack up, bag and baggage, and take myself elsewhere.  Cousin William is one of those persons who are willing to do everything except what they are wanted to do.  He will go on talking about the Belton estate, when I want to know whether I may really look for as much as twelve shillings a week to live upon.’

’He wants me to speak to you about about the earnest love he bears for you.’

’Oh dear!  Mary could you not suppose it all to be said?  It is an old trouble, and need not be repeated.’

‘No,’ said Mary, ‘I cannot suppose it to be all said.’  Clara looking up as she heard the voice, was astonished both by the fire in the woman’s eye and by the force of her tone.  ’I will not think so meanly of you as to believe that such words from such a man can be passed by as meaning nothing.  I will not say that you ought to be able to love him; in that you cannot control your heart; but if you cannot love him, the want of such love ought to make you suffer to suffer much and be very sad.’

‘I cannot agree to that, Mary.’

’Is all his life nothing, then?  Do you know what love means with him this love which he bears to you?  Do you understand that it is everything to him? that from the first moment in which he acknowledged to himself that his heart was set upon you, he could not bring himself to set it upon any other thing for a moment?  Perhaps you have never understood this; have never perceived that he is so much in earnest, that to him it is more than money, or land, or health more than life itself that he so loves that he would willingly give everything that he has for his love?  Have you known this?’

Clara would not answer these questions for a while.  What if she had known it all, was she therefore bound to sacrifice herself?  Could it be the duty of any woman to give herself to a man simply because a man wanted her?  That was the argument as it was put forward now by Mary Belton.

‘Dear, dearest Clara,’ said Mary Belton, stretching herself forward from her chair, and putting out her thin, almost transparent, hand, ’I do not think that you have thought enough of this; or, perhaps, you have not known it.  But his love for you is as I say.  To him it is everything.  It pervades every hour of every day, every corner in his life!  He knows nothing of anything else while he is in his present state.’