to every one to get to Corinth.'

'You may laugh at him, but you'd like him if you knew him.'

'One never can be sure of that from a lady's account of a man. When a
man talks to me about another man, I can generally tell whether I
should like him or not particularly if I know the man well who is
giving the description; but it is quite different when a woman is the
describer.'

'You mean that you won't take my word?'

'We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your
cousin is a worthy man and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of
Cawdor in his prosperous days but probably if he and I came together we
shouldn't have a word to say to each other.'

Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she
knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were
they two to meet in her presence the captain and the farmer she felt
that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the better
man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the two, though
she knew also that she could not love him as she loved the other.

Then they changed the subject of their conversation, and discussed Mrs
Winterfield, as they had often done before. Captain Aylmer had said
that he should return to London on the Saturday, the present day being
Tuesday, and Clara accused him of escaping always from the real hard
work of his position. 'I observe that you never stay a Sunday at
Perivale,' she said.