Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

7. CHAPTER VII: MISS AMEDROZ GOES TO PERIVALE (continued)

'We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your cousin is a worthy man and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor in his prosperous days but probably if he and I came together we shouldn't have a word to say to each other.'

Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were they two to meet in her presence the captain and the farmer she felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the two, though she knew also that she could not love him as she loved the other.

Then they changed the subject of their conversation, and discussed Mrs Winterfield, as they had often done before. Captain Aylmer had said that he should return to London on the Saturday, the present day being Tuesday, and Clara accused him of escaping always from the real hard work of his position. 'I observe that you never stay a Sunday at Perivale,' she said.

'Well not often. Why should I? Sunday is just the day that people like to be at home.'

'I should have thought it would not have made much difference to a bachelor in that way.'

'But Sunday is a day that one specially likes to pass after one's own fashion.'

'Exactly and therefore you don't stay with my aunt. I understand it all completely.'

'Now you mean to be ill-natured!'

'I mean to say that I don't like Sundays at Perivale at all, and that I should do just as you do if I had the power. But women women, that is, of my age are such slaves! We are forced to give an obedience for which we can see no cause, and for which we can understand no necessity. I couldn't tell my aunt that I meant to go away on Saturday.'