CHAPTER XII.
MISS AMEDROZ RETURNS HOME.
Clara was to start by a train leaving Perivale at eight on the following morning, and therefore there was not much time for conversation before she went.

During the night she had endeavoured so to school herself as to banish from her breast all feelings of anger against her lover, and of regret as regarded herself.

Probably, as she told herself, she had made more of what he had said than he had intended that she should do; and then, was it not natural that he should think much of his mother, and feel anxious as to the way in which she might receive his wife?
As to that feeling of anger on her own part, she did get quit of it;--but the regret was not to be so easily removed.

It was not only what Captain Aylmer had said about his mother that clung to her, doing much to quench her joy; but there had been a coldness in his tone to her throughout the evening which she recognised almost unconsciously, and which made her heart heavy in spite of the joy which she repeatedly told herself ought to be her own.

And she also felt,--though she was not clearly aware that she did so,--that his manner towards her had become less affectionate, less like that of a lover, since the honest tale she had told him of her own early love for him.