Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

6. CHAPTER VI: SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING ONCE AGAIN (continued)

'Oh no,' he said.

'But I shall. I won't have you go without seeing you out of the door.'

And on the following morning she was up before him. She hardly understood, herself, why she was doing this. She knew that it should be her object to avoid any further special conversation on that subject which they discussed up among the rocks. She knew that she could give him no comfort, and that he could give none to her. It would seem that he was willing to let the remembrance of the scene pass away, so that it should be as though it had never been; and surely it was not for her to disturb so salutary an arrangement! But yet she was up to bid him God speed as he went. She could not bear,. so she excused the matter to herself she could not bear to think that he should regard her as ungrateful. She knew all that he had done for them. She had perceived that the taking of the land, the building of the sheds, the life which he had contrived in so short a time to throw into the old place, had all come from a desire on his part to do good to those in whose way he stood by family arrangements made almost before his birth; and she longed to say to him one word of thanks. And had he not told her once in the heat of his disappointment; for then at that moment, as Clara had said to herself, she supposed that he must have been in some measure disappointed had he not even then told her that when she wanted a brother's care, a brother's care should be given to her by him? Was she not therefore~ bound to do for him what she would do for a brother?

She, with her own hands, brought the coffee into the little breakfast parlour, and handed the cup into his hands. The gig, which had come overnight from Taunton, was not yet at the door, and there was a minute or two during which they must speak to each other. Who has not seen some such girl when she has come down early, without the full completeness of her morning toilet, and yet nicer, fresher, prettier to the eye of him who is so favoured, than she has ever been in more formal attire? And what man who has been so favoured has not loved her who has so favoured him, even though he may not previously have been enamoured as deeply as poor Will Belton?