"Oh, dear, no;--not wrong at all. How can it be wrong?" He did not tell her that he also had got all he wanted; but his lack of enthusiasm in this respect did not surprise her, or at first even vex her. She had always known him to be a man careful of his words,--knowing their value,--not speaking with hurried rashness as would her dear cousin Will. And she doubted whether, after all, such hurried words mean as much as words which are slower and calmer. After all his heat in love and consequent disappointment, Will Belton had left her apparently well contented. His fervour had been short-lived. She loved her cousin dearly, and was so very glad that his fervour had been short-lived!
"When you asked me, I could but tell you the truth," she said, smiling at him.
The truth is very well, but he would have liked it better had the truth come to him by slower degrees. When his aunt had told him to marry Clara Amedroz, he had been at once reconciled to the order by a feeling on his own part that the conquest of Clara would not be too facile. She was a woman of value, not to be snapped up easily,--or by any one. So he had thought then; but he began to fancy now that he had been wrong in that opinion.
The walk back to the house was not of itself very exciting, though to Clara it was a short period of unalloyed bliss. No doubt had then come upon her to cloud her happiness, and she was "wrapped up in measureless content." It was well that they should both be silent at such a moment. Only yesterday had been buried their dear old friend,--the friend who had brought them together, and been so anxious for their future happiness! And Clara Amedroz was not a young girl, prone to jump out of her shoes with elation because she had got a lover. She could be steadily happy without many immediate words about her happiness. When they had reached the house, and were once more together in the drawing-room, she again gave him her hand, and was the first to speak. "And you; are you contented?" she asked. Who does not know the smile of triumph with which a girl asks such a question at such a moment as that?
"Contented?--well,--yes; I think I am," he said.
But even those words did not move her to doubt. "If you are," she said, "I am. And now I will leave you till dinner, that you may think over what you have done."