"Of very great satisfaction," he continued; "and I cannot but think that we were justified by the circumstances of our position in forgetting for a time the sad solemnity of the occasion. When I remember that it was but the day before yesterday that I followed my dear old aunt to the grave, I am astonished to think that yesterday I should have made an offer of marriage." What could be the good of his talking in this strain? Clara, too, had had her own misgivings on the same subject,--little qualms of conscience that had come to her as she remembered her old friend in the silent watches of the night; but such thoughts were for the silent watches, and not for open expression in the broad daylight. But he had paused, and she must say something. "One's excuse to oneself is this,--that she would have wished it so." "Exactly. She would have wished it. Indeed she did wish it, and therefore--" He paused in what he was saying, and felt himself to be on difficult ground. Her eye was full upon him, and she waited for a moment or two as though expecting that he would finish his words. But as he did not go on, she finished them for him. "And therefore you sacrificed your own feelings." Her heart was becoming sore, and she was unable to restrain the utterance of her sarcasm. "Just so," said he; "or, rather, not exactly that. I don't mean that I am sacrificed; for, of course, as I have just now said, nothing as regards myself can be more satisfactory. But yesterday should have been a solemn day to us; and as it was not--" "I thought it very solemn." "What I mean is that I find an excuse in remembering that I was doing what she asked me to do." "What she asked you to do, Fred?" "What I had promised, I mean." "What you had promised? I did not hear that before." These last words were spoken in a very low voice, but they went direct to Captain Aylmer's ears. "But you have heard me declare," he said, "that as regards myself nothing could be more satisfactory." "Fred," she said, "listen to me for a moment. You and I engaged ourselves to each other yesterday as man and wife." "Of course we did." "Listen to me, dear Fred. In doing that there was nothing in my mind unbefitting the sadness of the day. Even in death we must think of life, and if it were well for you and me that we should be together, it would surely have been but a foolish ceremony between us to have abstained from telling each other that it would be so because my aunt had died last week. But it may be, and I think it is the case, that the feelings arising from her death have made us both too precipitate." "I don't understand how that can be." "You have been anxious to keep a promise made to her, without considering sufficiently whether in doing so you would secure your own happiness; and I--" "I don't know about you, but as regards myself I must be considered to be the best judge." "And I have been too much in a hurry in believing that which I wished to believe."