Hitherto she had been independent she had specially been careful to show to him her resolve to be independent of him.  Now she would put aside all that, and let him know that she recognized in him her lord and master as well as husband.  To her father had been left no strength on which she could lean, and she had been forced therefore to trust to her own strength.  Now she would be dependent on him who was to be her husband.  As heretofore she had rejected his offers of assistance almost with disdain, so now would she accept them without scruple, looking to him to be her guide in all things, putting from her that carping spirit in which she had been wont to judge of his actions, and believing in him as a wife should believe in her husband.

Such were the resolutions which Clara made in the first hour of solitude which came to her after her engagement; and they would have been wise resolutions but for this flaw that the stronger was submitting itself to the weaker, the greater to the less, the more honest to the less honest, that which was nearly true to that which was in great part false.  The theory of man and wife that special theory in accordance with which the wife is to bend herself in loving submission before her husband is very beautiful; and would be good altogether if it could only be arranged that the husband should be the stronger and the greater of the two.  The theory is based upon that hypothesis and the hypothesis sometimes fails of confirmation.  In ordinary marriages the vessel rights itself, and the stronger and the greater takes the lead, whether clothed in petticoats, or in coat, waistcoat, and trousers; but there sometimes comes a terrible shipwreck, when the woman before marriage has filled herself full with ideas of submission, and then finds that her golden. headed god has got an iron body and feet of clay.

Captain Aylmer, when he was left alone, had also something to think about; and as there were two hours left for such thought before he would again meet Clara, and as he had nothing else with which to occupy himself during those two hours, he again strolled down to the bridge on which be had made his offer.  He strolled down there, thinking that he was thinking, but hardly giving much mind to his thoughts, which he allowed to run away with themselves as they listed.  Of course he was going to be married.  That was a thing settled.  And he was perfectly satisfied with himself in that he had done nothing in a hurry, and could accuse himself of no folly even if he had no great cause for triumph.  He had been long thinking that he should like to have Clara Amedroz for his wife long thinking that he would ask her to marry him; and having for months indulged such thoughts, he could not take blame to himself for having made to his aunt that deathbed promise which she had exacted.  At the moment in which she asked him the question he was himself anxious to do the thing she desired of him.  How then could be have refused her?