CHAPTER IV

SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING

A DEAR cousin, and safe against love-making! This was Clara's verdict
respecting Will Belton, as she lay thinking of him in bed that night.
Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue in her eyes I
cannot, perhaps, explain. But all young ladies are apt to talk to
themselves in such phrases about gentlemen with whom they are thrown
into chance intimacy as though love-making were in itself a thing
injurious and antagonistic to happiness, instead of being, as it is,
the very salt of life. Safe against love-making! And yet Mrs Askerton,
her friend, had spoken of the probability of such love-making as being
the great advantage of his coming. And there could not be a second
opinion as to the expediency of a match between her and her cousin in a
worldly point of view. Clara, moreover, had already perceived that he
was a man fit to guide a wife, very good- humoured and good-tempered
also, anxious to give pleasure to others, a man of energy and
forethought, who would be sure to do well in the world and hold his
head always high among his fellows as good a husband as a girl could
have. Nevertheless, she congratulated herself in that she felt
satisfied that he was safe against love-making! Might it be possible
that the pressing of hands at Taunton had been so tender, and those
last words spoken with Captain Aylmer so soft, that on his account she
felt delighted to think that her cousin was warranted not to make love?

And what did Will Belton think about his cousin, insured as he was thus
supposed to be against the dangers of love? He, also, lay awake for
awhile that night, thinking over his new friendship. Or rather he