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. They went up-stairs and again sat themselves in chairs over the fire; but for a while conversation did not seem to come to them freely. Clara felt that it was now Captain Aylmer's turn to begin, and Captain Aylmer felt--that he wished he could read the newspaper. He had nothing in particular that he desired to say to his lady-love. That morning, as he was shaving himself, he had something to say that was very particular,--as to which he was at that moment so nervous, that he had cut himself slightly through the trembling of his hand. But that had now been said, and he was nervous no longer. That had now been said, and the thing settled so easily, that he wondered at his own nervousness. He did not know that there was anything that required much further immediate speech. Clara had thought somewhat of the time which might be proposed for their marriage, making some little resolves, with which the reader is already acquainted; but no ideas of this kind presented themselves to Captain Aylmer. He had asked his cousin to be his wife, thereby making good his promise to his aunt. There could be no further necessity for pressing haste. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. It is not to be supposed that the thriving lover actually spoke to himself in such language as that,--or that he confessed to himself that Clara Amedroz was an evil to him rather than a blessing. But his feelings were already so far tending in that direction, that he was by no means disposed to make any further promise, or to engage himself in closer connection with matrimony by the mention of any special day. Clara, finding that her companion would not talk without encouragement from her, had to begin again, and asked all those natural questions about his family, his brother, his sister, his home habits, and the old house in Yorkshire, the answers to which must be so full of interest to her. But even on these subjects he was dry, and indisposed to answer with the full copiousness of free communication which she desired. And at last there came a question and an answer,--a word or two on one side, and then a word or two on the other, from which Clara got a wound which was very sore to her. "I have always pictured to myself," she said, "your mother as a woman who has been very handsome." "She is still a handsome woman, though she is over sixty." "Tall, I suppose?" "Yes, tall, and with something of--of--what shall I say--dignity, about her." "She is not grand, I hope?"