When she sat down, resolved to give herself an answer, there was no doubt.

She could not love her cousin, Will Belton, because her heart belonged to Captain Aylmer.
But she knew that she had received nothing in exchange for her heart.
He had been kind to her on that journey to Taunton, when the agony arising from her brother's death had almost crushed her.

He had often been kind to her on days before that,--so kind, so soft in his manners, approaching so nearly to the little tendernesses of incipient love-making, that the idea of regarding him as her lover had of necessity forced itself upon her.

But in nothing had he gone beyond those tendernesses, which need not imperatively be made to mean anything, though they do often mean so much.

It was now two years since she had first thought that Captain Aylmer was the most perfect gentleman she knew, and nearly two years since Mrs.Winterfield had expressed to her a hope that Captain Aylmer might become her husband.