fifteen hundred pounds. There will be as much as that after burying me
without burden to the estate. You must acknowledge that he has been
very generous.'

But Clara, in her heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for his
generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing. It was
grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare pittance to
keep her out of the workhouse to him who had twice seemed to be on the
point of asking her to share everything with him. She did not love her
cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin Will's assurance to her
that he would treat her with a brother's care was sweeter to her by far
than Frederic Aylmer's well-balanced counsel to his aunt on her behalf.
In her present mood, too, she wanted no one to have fore. thought for
her; she desired no provision; for her, in the discomfiture of heart,
there was consolation in the feeling that when she should find herself
alone in the world, she would have been ill-treated by her friends all
round her. There was a charm in the prospect of her desolation of which
she did not wish to be robbed by the assurance of some seventy pounds a
year, to be given to her by Captain Frederic Aylmer. To be robbed of
one's grievance is the last and foulest wrong a wrong under which the
most enduring temper will at last yield and become soured by which the
strongest back will be broken. 'Well, my dear,' continued Mrs
Winterfield, when Clara made no response to this appeal for praise.

'It is so hard for me to say anything about it, aunt. What can I say
but that I don't want to be a burden to any one?'

'That is a position which very few women can attain, that is, very few
single women.'