"She is worth more than that," said Arnold, "and I should find work somehow.

But yet, to plunge her into poverty--and to make Clara the most unhappy of women!" The reason why Clara would be made the most unhappy of women, was that Clara was his cousin and his benefactor, to whom he owed everything.
She was the kindest of patrons, and she liked nothing so much as the lavishing upon her ward everything that he could desire.

But she also, unfortunately, illustrated the truth of Chaucer's teaching, in that she loved power more than anything else, and had already mapped out Arnold's life for him.
It was his custom to call upon her daily, to use her house as his own.
When they were separated, they wrote to each other every day; the relations between them were of the most intimate and affectionate kind.

He advised in all her affairs, while she directed his; it was understood that he was her heir, and though she was not more than five and forty or so, and had, apparently, a long life still before her, so that the succession was distant, the prospect gave him importance.

She had been out of town, and perhaps the fact of a new acquaintance with so obscure a person as a simple tutor by correspondence, seemed to Arnold not worth mentioning.