What might have come of my heart if you hadn't fallen in my way, who can say?
I love Will Belton dearly, and hope that you may do so--" "I must see him first." "Of course;--but, as I was saying, I doubt whether, under any circumstances, he would have been the man I should have chosen for a husband.

But as it was,--it was impossible.

Now you know it all, and I think that I have been very frank with you." "Oh! very frank." He would not take her little jokes, nor understand her little prettinesses.

That he was a man not prone to joking she knew well, but still it went against the grain with her to find that he was so very hard in his replies to her attempts.
It was not easy for Clara to carry on the conversation after this, so she proposed that they should go up-stairs into the drawing-room.
Such a change even as that would throw them into a different way of talking, and prevent the necessity of any further immediate allusion to Will Belton.

For Clara was aware, though she hardly knew why, that her frankness to her future husband had hardly been successful, and she regretted that she had on this occasion mentioned her cousin's name.