anything, though they do often mean so much. It was now two years since
she had first thought that Captain Aylmer was the most perfect
gentleman she knew, and nearly two years since Mrs Winterfield had
expressed to her a hope that Captain Aylmer might become her husband.
She had replied that such a thing was impossible as any girl would have
replied; and had in consequence treated Captain Aylmer with all the
coolness which she had been able to assume whenever she was in company
with him in her aunt's presence. Nor was it natural to her to be
specially gracious to a man under such trying circumstances, even when
no Mrs Winterfield was there to behold. And so things had gone on.
Captain Aylmer had now and again made himself very pleasant to her at
certain trying periods of joy or trouble almost more than pleasant. But
nothing had come of it, and Clara had told herself that Captain Aylmer
had no special feeling in her favour. She had told herself this, ever
since that journey together from Perivale to Taunton; but never till
now had she confessed to herself what was her own case.

She made a comparison between the two men. Her cousin Will was, she
thought, the more generous, the more energetic perhaps by nature, the
man of the higher gifts. In person he was undoubtedly the superior. He
was full of noble qualities forgetful of self, industrious, full of
resources, a very man of men, able to command, eager in doing work for
others' good and his own a man altogether uncontaminated by the
coldness and selfishness of the outer world. But he was rough, awkward,
but indifferently educated, and with few of those tastes which to Clara
Amedroz were delightful. He could not read poetry to her, he could not
tell her of what the world of literature was doing now or of what it
had done in times past. He knew nothing of the inner world of worlds
which governs the world. She doubted whether he could have told her who
composed the existing cabinet, or have given the name of a single