Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

29. CHAPTER XXIX: THERE IS NOTHING TO TELL (continued)

'I am the best judge of that.'

'For myself at any rate I will judge. For myself I have decided. Now I have answered the questions which you asked me as to my love for yourself. To that other question which you have thought fit to put to me about my cousin, I refuse to give any answer whatsoever.' Then, having said so much, she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, and left him standing there alone.

We need not follow her as she went up, almost mechanically, into her own room the room that used to be her own and then shut herself in, waiting till she should be assured, first by sounds in the house, and then by silence, that he was gone. That she fell away greatly from the majesty of her demeanour when she was thus alone, and descended to the ordinary ways of troubled females, we may be quite sure. But to her there was no further difficulty. Her work for the day was done. In due time she would take herself to the cottage, and all would be well, or, at any rate, comfortable with her. But what was he to do? How was he to get himself out of the house, and take himself back to London? While he had been in pursuit of her, and when he was leaving his vehicle at the public- house in the village of Belton, he like some other invading generals had failed to provide adequately for his retreat. When he was alone he took a turn or two about the room, half thinking that Clara would return to him. She could hardly leave him alone in a strange house him, who, as he had twice told her, had come all the way from Yorkshire to see her. But she did not return, and gradually he came to understand that he must provide for his own retreat without assistance. He was hardly aware, even now, how greatly he had transcended his usual modes of speech and action, both in the energy of his supplication and in the violence of his rebuke. He had been lifted for awhile out of himself by the excitement of his position, and now that he was subsiding into quiescence, he was unconscious that he had almost mounted into passion that he had spoken of love very nearly with eloquence. But he did recognize this as a fact that Clara was not to be his wife, and that he had better get back from Belton to London as quickly as possible. It would be well for him to teach himself to look back on the result of his aunt's dying request as an episode in his life satisfactorily concluded. His mother had undoubtedly been right. Clara, he could see now, would have led him a devil of a life; and even had she come to him possessed of a moiety of the property a supposition as to which he had very strong doubts still she might have been dear at the money. 'No real feeling,' he said to himself, as he walked about the room 'none whatever; and then so deficient in delicacy!' But still he was discontented because he had been rejected, and therefore tried to make him. self believe that he could still have her if he chose to persevere. 'But no,' he said, as he continued to pace the room, 'I have done everything more than every. thing that honour demands. I shall not ask her again. it is her own fault. She is an imperious woman, and my mother read her character aright.' It did not occur to him, as he thus consoled himself for what he had lost, that his mother's accusation against Clara had been altogether of a different nature. When we console ourselves by our own arguments, we are not apt to examine their accuracy with much strictness.