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The Belton Estate

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #4969 · 844,485 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Belton Estate

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #4969]
                Most recently updated: November 30, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4969

Credits: E-text prepared by Andrew Turek and revised by Rita Bailey and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BELTON ESTATE ***


E-text prepared by Andrew Turek
and revised by Rita Bailey and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



THE BELTON ESTATE

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE







First published in serial form in the _Fortnightly Review_
in 1865 and in book form the same year




CONTENTS

        I. THE REMNANTS OF THE AMEDROZ FAMILY.
       II. THE HEIR PROPOSES TO VISIT HIS COUSINS.
      III. WILL BELTON.
       IV. SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING.
        V. NOT SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING.
       VI. SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING ONCE AGAIN.
      VII. MISS AMEDROZ GOES TO PERIVALE.
     VIII. CAPTAIN AYLMER MEETS HIS CONSTITUENTS.
       IX. CAPTAIN AYLMER'S PROMISE TO HIS AUNT.
        X. SHOWING HOW CAPTAIN AYLMER KEPT HIS PROMISE.
       XI. MISS AMEDROZ IS TOO CANDID BY HALF.
      XII. MISS AMEDROZ RETURNS HOME.
     XIII. MR. WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN THE COUNTRY.
      XIV. MR. WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN LONDON.
       XV. EVIL WORDS.
      XVI. THE HEIR'S SECOND VISIT TO BELTON.
     XVII. AYLMER PARK.
    XVIII. MRS. ASKERTON'S STORY.
      XIX. MISS AMEDROZ HAS ANOTHER CHANCE.
       XX. WILLIAM BELTON DOES NOT GO OUT HUNTING.
      XXI. MRS. ASKERTON'S GENEROSITY.
     XXII. PASSIONATE PLEADING.
    XXIII. THE LAST DAY AT BELTON.
     XXIV. THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY HOTEL.
      XXV. MISS AMEDROZ HAS SOME HASHED CHICKEN.
     XXVI. THE AYLMER PARK HASHED CHICKEN COMES TO AN END.
    XXVII. ONCE MORE BACK TO BELTON.
   XXVIII. MISS AMEDROZ IS PURSUED.
     XXIX. THERE IS NOTHING TO TELL.
      XXX. MARY BELTON.
     XXXI. TAKING POSSESSION.
    XXXII. CONCLUSION.




CHAPTER I.

THE REMNANTS OF THE AMEDROZ FAMILY.


Mrs. Amedroz, the wife of Bernard Amedroz, Esq., of Belton Castle,
and mother of Charles and Clara Amedroz, died when those children
were only eight and six years old, thereby subjecting them to the
greatest misfortune which children born in that sphere of life can be
made to suffer. And, in the case of this boy and girl the misfortune
was aggravated greatly by the peculiarities of the father's
character. Mr. Amedroz was not a bad man,--as men are held to be bad
in the world's esteem. He was not vicious,--was not a gambler or a
drunkard,--was not self-indulgent to a degree that brought upon him
any reproach; nor was he regardless of his children. But he was an
idle, thriftless man, who, at the age of sixty-seven, when the reader
will first make his acquaintance, had as yet done no good in the
world whatever. Indeed he had done terrible evil; for his son Charles
was now dead,--had perished by his own hand,--and the state of things
which had brought about this woful event had been chiefly due to the
father's neglect.

Belton Castle is a pretty country seat, standing in a small
but beautifully wooded park, close under the Quantock hills in
Somersetshire; and the little town of Belton clusters round the park
gates. Few Englishmen know the scenery of England well, and the
prettinesses of Somersetshire are among those which are the least
known. But the Quantock hills are very lovely, with their rich
valleys lying close among them, and their outlying moorlands running
off towards Dulverton and the borders of Devonshire,--moorlands which
are not flat, like Salisbury Plain, but are broken into ravines and
deep watercourses and rugged dells hither and thither; where old oaks
are standing, in which life seems to have, dwindled down to the last
spark; but the last spark is still there, and the old oaks give forth
their scanty leaves from year to year.

In among the hills, somewhat off the high road from Minehead to
Taunton, and about five miles from the sea, stands the little town,
or village, of Belton, and the modern house of Mr. Amedroz, which
is called Belton Castle. The village,--for it is in truth no more,
though it still maintains a charter for a market, and there still
exists on Tuesdays some pretence of an open sale of grain and
butcher's meat in the square before the church-gate,--contains
about two thousand persons. That and the whole parish of Belton did
once,--and that not long ago,--belong to the Amedroz family. They had
inherited it from the Beltons of old, an Amedroz having married the
heiress of the family. And as the parish is large, stretching away to
Exmoor on one side, and almost to the sea on the other, containing
the hamlet of Redicote, lying on the Taunton high road,--Redicote,
where the post-office is placed, a town almost in itself, and one
which is now much more prosperous than Belton,--as the property when
it came to the first Amedroz had limits such as these, the family had
been considerable in the county. But these limits had been straitened
in the days of the grandfather and the father of Bernard Amedroz; and
he, when he married a Miss Winterfield of Taunton, was thought to
have done very well, in that mortgages were paid off the property
with his wife's money to such an extent as to leave him in clear
possession of an estate that gave him two thousand a year. As Mr.
Amedroz had no grand neighbours near him, as the place is remote
and the living therefore cheap, and as with this income there was
no question of annual visits to London, Mr. and Mrs. Amedroz might
have done very well with such of the good things of the world as had
fallen to their lot. And had the wife lived such would probably have
been the case; for the Winterfields were known to be prudent people.
But Mrs. Amedroz had died young, and things with Bernard Amedroz had
gone badly.

And yet the evil had not been so much with him as with that terrible
boy of his. The father had been nearly forty when he married. He had
then never done any good; but as neither had he done much harm, the
friends of the family had argued well of his future career. After
him, unless he should leave a son behind him, there would be no
Amedroz left among the Quantock hills; and by some arrangement
in respect to that Winterfield money which came to him on his
marriage,--the Winterfields having a long-dated connection with the
Beltons of old,--the Amedroz property was, at Bernard's marriage,
entailed back upon a distant Belton cousin, one Will Belton, whom
no one had seen for many years, but who was by blood nearer to the
squire, in default of children of his own, than any other of his
relatives. And now Will Belton was the heir to Belton Castle; for
Charles Amedroz, at the age of twenty-seven, had found the miseries
of the world to be too many for him, and had put an end to them and
to himself.

Charles had been a clever fellow,--a very clever fellow in the eyes
of his father. Bernard Amedroz knew that he himself was not a clever
fellow, and admired his son accordingly; and when Charles had been
expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak,--in his vengeance against
a neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the
doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads
of all the trees in a young fir plantation,--his father was proud of
the exploit. When he was rusticated a second time from Trinity, and
when the father received an intimation that his son's name had better
be taken from the College books, the squire was not so well pleased;
but even then he found some delight in the stories which reached him
of his son's vagaries; and when the young man commenced Bohemian life
in London, his father did nothing to restrain him. Then there came
the old story--debts, endless debts; and lies, endless lies. During
the two years before his death, his father paid for him, or undertook
to pay, nearly ten thousand pounds, sacrificing the life assurances
which were to have made provision for his daughter; sacrificing, to a
great extent, his own life income,--sacrificing everything, so that
the property might not be utterly ruined at his death. That Charles
Amedroz should be a brighter, greater man than any other Amedroz,
had still been the father's pride. At the last visit which Charles
had paid to Belton his father had called upon him to pledge himself
solemnly that his sister should not be made to suffer by what had
been done for him. Within a month of that time he had blown his
brains out in his London lodgings, thus making over the entire
property to Will Belton at his father's death. At that last pretended
settlement with his father and his father's lawyer, he had kept back
the mention of debts as heavy nearly as those to which he had owned;
and there were debts of honour, too, of which he had not spoken,
trusting to the next event at Newmarket to set him right. The next
event at Newmarket had set him more wrong than ever, and so there had
come an end to everything with Charles Amedroz.

This had happened in the spring, and the afflicted father,--afflicted
with the double sorrow of his son's terrible death and his daughter's
ruin,--had declared that he would turn his face to the wall and die.
But the old squire's health, though far from strong, was stronger
than he had deemed it, and his feelings, sharp enough, were less
sharp than he had thought them; and when a month had passed by, he
had discovered that it would be better that he should live, in order
that his daughter might still have bread to eat and a house of her
own over her head. Though he was now an impoverished man, there was
still left to him the means of keeping up the old home; and he told
himself that it must, if possible, be so kept that a few pounds
annually might be put by for Clara. The old carriage-horses were
sold, and the park was let to a farmer, up to the hall door of the
castle. So much the squire could do; but as to the putting by of
the few pounds, any dependence on such exertion as that on his part
would, we may say, be very precarious.

Belton Castle was not in truth a castle. Immediately before the front
door, so near to the house as merely to allow of a broad road running
between it and the entrance porch, there stood an old tower, which
gave its name to the residence,--an old square tower, up which the
Amedroz boys for three generations had been able to climb by means
of the ivy and broken stones in one of the inner corners,--and this
tower was a remnant of a real castle that had once protected the
village of Belton. The house itself was an ugly residence, three
stories high, built in the time of George II., with low rooms and
long passages, and an immense number of doors. It was a large
unattractive house,--unattractive, that is, as regarded its own
attributes,--but made interesting by the beauty of the small park in
which it stood. Belton Park did not, perhaps, contain much above a
hundred acres, but the land was so broken into knolls and valleys,
in so many places was the rock seen to be cropping up through the
verdure, there were in it so many stunted old oaks, so many points
of vantage for the lover of scenery, that no one would believe it
to be other than a considerable domain. The farmer who took it, and
who would not under any circumstances undertake to pay more than
seventeen shillings an acre for it, could not be made to think that
it was in any way considerable. But Belton Park, since first it
was made a park, had never before been regarded after this fashion.
Farmer Stovey, of the Grange, was the first man of that class who
had ever assumed the right to pasture his sheep in Belton chase,--as
the people around were still accustomed to call the woodlands of the
estate.

It was full summer at Belton, and four months had now passed since
the dreadful tidings had reached the castle. It was full summer,
and the people of the village were again going about their ordinary
business; and the shop-girls, with their lovers from Redicote, were
again to be seen walking among the oaks in the park on a Sunday
evening; and the world in that district of Somersetshire was getting
itself back into its grooves. The fate of the young heir had
disturbed the grooves greatly, and had taught many in those parts to
feel that the world was coming to an end. They had not loved young
Amedroz, for he had been haughty when among them, and there had been
wrongs committed by the dissolute young squire, and grief had come
from his misdoings upon more than one household; but to think that he
should have destroyed himself with his own hand! And then, to think
that Miss Clara would become a beggar when the old squire should die!
All the neighbours around understood the whole history of the entail,
and knew that the property was to go to Will Belton. Now Will Belton
was not a gentleman! So, at least, said the Belton folk, who had
heard that the heir had been brought up as a farmer somewhere in
Norfolk. Will Belton had once been at the Castle as a boy, now some
fifteen years ago, and then there had sprung up a great quarrel
between him and his distant cousin Charles;--and Will, who was rough
and large of stature, had thrashed the smaller boy severely; and the
thing had grown to have dimensions larger than those which generally
attend the quarrels of boys; and Will had said something which
had shown how well he understood his position in reference to the
estate;--and Charles had hated him. So Will had gone, and had been
no more seen among the oaks whose name he bore. And the people, in
spite of his name, regarded him as an interloper. To them, with their
short memories and scanty knowledge of the past, Amedroz was more
honourable than Belton, and they looked upon the coming man as an
intruder. Why should not Miss Clara have the property? Miss Clara had
never done harm to any one!

Things got back into their old grooves, and at the end of the third
month the squire was once more seen in the old family pew at church.
He was a large man, who had been very handsome, and who now, in his
yellow leaf, was not without a certain beauty of manliness. He wore
his hair and his beard long; before his son's death they were grey,
but now they were very white. And though he stooped, there was still
a dignity in his slow step,--a dignity that came to him from nature
rather than from any effort. He was a man who, in fact, did little or
nothing in the world,--whose life had been very useless; but he had
been gifted with such a presence that he looked as though he were
one of God's nobler creatures. Though always dignified he was ever
affable, and the poor liked him better than they might have done had
he passed his time in searching out their wants and supplying them.
They were proud of their squire, though he had done nothing for them.
It was something to them to have a man who could so carry himself
sitting in the family pew in their parish church. They knew that he
was poor, but they all declared that he was never mean. He was a
real gentleman,--was this last Amedroz of the family; therefore they
curtsied low, and bowed on his reappearance among them, and made all
those signs of reverential awe which are common to the poor when they
feel reverence for the presence of a superior.

Clara was there with him, but she had shown herself in the pew for
four or five weeks before this. She had not been at home when the
fearful news had reached Belton, being at that time with a certain
lady who lived on the further side of the county, at Perivale,--a
certain Mrs. Winterfield, born a Folliott, a widow, who stood to Miss
Amedroz in the place of an aunt. Mrs. Winterfield was, in truth, the
sister of a gentleman who had married Clara's aunt,--there having
been marriages and intermarriages between the Winterfields and
the Folliotts, and the Belton-Amedroz families. With this lady in
Perivale, which I maintain to be the dullest little town in England,
Miss Amedroz was staying when the news reached her father, and when
it was brought direct from London to herself. Instantly she had
hurried home, making the journey with all imaginable speed though her
heart was all but broken within her bosom. She had found her father
stricken to the ground, and it was the more necessary, therefore,
that she should exert herself. It would not do that she also should
yield to that longing for death which terrible calamities often
produce for a season.

Clara Amedroz, when she first heard the news of her brother's fate,
had felt that she was for ever crushed to the ground. She had known
too well what had been the nature of her brother's life, but she
had not expected or feared any such termination to his career as
this which had now come upon him--to the terrible affliction of all
belonging to him. She felt at first, as did also her father, that
she and he were annihilated as regards this world, not only by an
enduring grief, but also by a disgrace which would never allow her
again to hold up her head. And for many a long year much of this
feeling clung to her;--clung to her much more strongly than to her
father. But strength was hers to perceive, even before she had
reached her home, that it was her duty to repress both the feeling
of shame and the sorrow, as far as they were capable of repression.
Her brother had been weak, and in his weakness had sought a coward's
escape from the ills of the world around him. She must not also be a
coward! Bad as life might be to her henceforth, she must endure it
with such fortitude as she could muster. So resolving she returned to
her father, and was able to listen to his railings with a fortitude
that was essentially serviceable both to him and to herself.

"Both of you! Both of you!" the unhappy father had said in his woe.
"The wretched boy has destroyed you as much as himself!" "No, sir,"
she had answered, with a forbearance in her misery, which, terrible
as was the effort, she forced herself to accomplish for his sake. "It
is not so. No thought of that need add to your grief. My poor brother
has not hurt me;--not in the way you mean." "He has ruined us all,"
said the father; "root and branch, man and woman, old and young,
house and land. He has brought the family to an end;--ah me, to such
an end!" After that the name of him who had taken himself from among
them was not mentioned between the father and daughter, and Clara
settled herself to the duties of her new life, striving to live as
though there was no great sorrow around her--as though no cloud-storm
had burst over her head.

The family lawyer, who lived at Taunton, had communicated the fact of
Charles's death to Mr. Belton, and Belton had acknowledged the letter
with the ordinary expressions of regret. The lawyer had alluded to
the entail, saying that it was improbable that Mr. Amedroz would have
another son. To this Belton had replied that for his cousin Clara's
sake he hoped that the squire's life might be long spared. The lawyer
smiled as he read the wish, thinking to himself that luckily no wish
on the part of Will Belton could influence his old client either for
good or evil. What man, let alone what lawyer, will ever believe
in the sincerity of such a wish as that expressed by the heir to a
property? And yet where is the man who will not declare to himself
that such, under such circumstances, would be his own wish?

Clara Amedroz at this time was not a very young lady. She had already
passed her twenty-fifth birthday, and in manners, appearance, and
habits was, at any rate, as old as her age. She made no pretence to
youth, speaking of herself always as one whom circumstances required
to take upon herself age in advance of her years. She did not dress
young, or live much with young people, or correspond with other
girls by means of crossed letters; nor expect that, for her, young
pleasures should be provided. Life had always been serious with her;
but now, we may say, since the terrible tragedy in the family, it
must be solemn as well as serious. The memory of her brother must
always be upon her; and the memory also of the fact that her father
was now an impoverished man, on whose behalf it was her duty to care
that every shilling spent in the house did its full twelve pennies'
worth of work. There was a mixture in this of deep tragedy and of
little care, which seemed to destroy for her the poetry as well as
the pleasure of life. The poetry and tragedy might have gone hand
in hand together; and so might the cares and pleasures of life have
done, had there been no black sorrow of which she must be ever
mindful. But it was her lot to have to scrutinize the butcher's bill
as she was thinking of her brother's fate; and to work daily among
small household things while the spectre of her brother's corpse was
ever before her eyes.

A word must be said to explain how it had come to pass that the life
led by Miss Amedroz had been more than commonly serious before that
tragedy had befallen the family. The name of the lady who stood to
Clara in the place of an aunt has been already mentioned. When a girl
has a mother, her aunt may be little or nothing to her. But when
the mother is gone, if there be an aunt unimpeded with other family
duties, then the family duties of that aunt begin--and are assumed
sometimes with great vigour. Such had been the case with Mrs.
Winterfield. No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious
ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs. Winterfield of Prospect Place,
Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff
against that excellent lady. She was an excellent lady--unselfish,
given to self-restraint, generous, pious, looking to find in her
religion a safe path through life--a path as safe as the facts of
Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. She was a woman fearing
much for others, but fearing also much for herself, striving to
maintain her house in godliness, hating sin, and struggling with the
weakness of her humanity so that she might not allow herself to hate
the sinners. But her hatred for the sin she found herself bound at
all times to pronounce--to show it by some act at all seasons. To
fight the devil was her work--was the appointed work of every living
soul, if only living souls could be made to acknowledge the necessity
of the task. Now an aunt of that kind, when she assumes her duties
towards a motherless niece, is apt to make life serious.

But, it will be said, Clara Amedroz could have rebelled; and Clara's
father was hardly made of such stuff that obedience to the aunt would
be enforced on her by parental authority. Doubtless Clara could
have rebelled against her aunt. Indeed, I do not know that she had
hitherto been very obedient. But there were family facts about these
Winterfield connections which would have made it difficult for her
to ignore her so-called aunt, even had she wished to do so. Mrs.
Winterfield had twelve hundred a year at her own disposal, and she
was the only person related to the Amedroz family from whom Mr.
Amedroz had a right to have expectations on his daughter's behalf.
Clara had, in a measure, been claimed by the lady, and the father had
made good the lady's claim, and Clara had acknowledged that a portion
of her life was due to the demands of Perivale. These demands had
undoubtedly made her life serious.

Life at Perivale was a very serious thing. As regards amusement,
ordinarily so called, the need of any such institution was not
acknowledged at Prospect House. Food, drink, and raiment were
acknowledged to be necessary to humanity, and, in accordance with the
rules of that house, they were supplied in plenty, and good of their
kind. Such ladies as Mrs. Winterfield generally keep good tables,
thinking no doubt that the eatables should do honour to the grace
that is said for them. And Mrs. Winterfield herself always wore a
thick black silk dress,--not rusty or dowdy with age,--but with
some gloss of the silk on it; giving away, with secret, underhand,
undiscovered charity, her old dresses to another lady of her own
sort, on whom fortune had not bestowed twelve hundred a year. And
Mrs. Winterfield kept a low, four-wheeled, one-horsed little phaeton,
in which she made her pilgrimages among the poor of Perivale, driven
by the most solemn of stable-boys, dressed up in a white great coat,
the most priggish of hats, and white cotton gloves. At the rate of
five miles an hour was she driven about, and this driving was to
her the amusement of life. But such an occupation to Clara Amedroz
assisted to make life serious.

In person Mrs. Winterfield was tall and thin, wearing on her brow
thin braids of false hair. She had suffered much from acute ill
health, and her jaws were sunken, and her eyes were hollow, and there
was a look of woe about her which seemed ever to be telling of her
own sorrows in this world and of the sorrows of others in the world
to come. Ill-nature was written on her face, but in this her face was
a false face. She had the manners of a cross, peevish woman; but her
manners also were false, and gave no proper idea of her character.
But still, such as she was, she made life very serious to those who
were called upon to dwell with her.

I need, I hope, hardly say that a young lady such as Miss Amedroz,
even though she had reached the age of twenty-five,--for at the time
to which I am now alluding she had nearly done so,--and was not young
of her age, had formed for herself no plan of life in which her
aunt's money figured as a motive power. She had gone to Perivale
when she was very young, because she had been told to do so, and had
continued to go, partly from obedience, partly from habit, and partly
from affection. An aunt's dominion, when once well established in
early years, cannot easily be thrown altogether aside,--even though
a young lady have a will of her own. Now Clara Amedroz had a strong
will of her own, and did not at all,--at any rate in these latter
days,--belong to that school of divinity in which her aunt shone
almost as a professor. And this circumstance, also, added to the
seriousness of her life. But in regard to her aunt's money she had
entertained no established hopes; and when her aunt opened her mind
to her on that subject, a few days before the arrival of the fatal
news at Perivale, Clara, though she was somewhat surprised, was by
no means disappointed. Now there was a certain Captain Aylmer in the
question, of whom in this opening chapter it will be necessary to say
a few words.

Captain Frederic Folliott Aylmer was, in truth, the nephew of Mrs.
Winterfield, whereas Clara Amedroz was not, in truth, her niece. And
Captain Aylmer was also Member of Parliament for the little borough
of Perivale, returned altogether on the Low Church interest,--for
a devotion to which, and for that alone, Perivale was noted
among boroughs. These facts together added not a little to Mrs.
Winterfield's influence and professorial power in the place, and gave
a dignity to the one-horse chaise which it might not otherwise have
possessed. But Captain Aylmer was only the second son of his father,
Sir Anthony Aylmer, who had married a Miss Folliott, sister of our
Mrs. Winterfield. On Frederic Aylmer his mother's estate was settled.
That and Mrs. Winterfield's property lay in the neighbourhood of
Perivale; and now, on the occasion to which I am alluding, Mrs.
Winterfield thought it necessary to tell Clara that the property must
all go together. She had thought about it, and had doubted about it,
and had prayed about it, and now she found that such a disposition of
it was her duty.

"I am quite sure you're right, aunt," Clara had said. She knew very
well what had come of that provision which her father had attempted
to make for her, and knew also how great were her father's
expectations in regard to Mrs. Winterfield's money.

"I hope I am; but I have thought it right to tell you. I shall feel
myself bound to tell Frederic. I have had many doubts, but I think
I am right."

"I am sure you are, aunt. What would he think of me if, at some
future time, he should have to find that I had been in his way?"

"The future time will not be long now, my dear."

"I hope it may; but long or short, it is better so."

"I think it is, my dear; I think it is. I think it is my duty."

It must be understood that Captain Aylmer was member for Perivale on
the Low Church interest, and that, therefore, when at Perivale he was
decidedly a Low Churchman. I am not aware that the peculiarity stuck
to him very closely at Aylmer Castle, in Yorkshire, or among his
friends in London; but there was no hypocrisy in this, as the world
goes. Women in such matters are absolutely false if they be not
sincere; but men, with political views, and with much of their
future prospects in jeopardy also, are allowed to dress themselves
differently for different scenes. Whatever be the peculiar interest
on which a man goes into Parliament, of course he has to live up to
that in his own borough. Whether malt, the franchise, or teetotalism
be his rallying point, of course he is full of it when among his
constituents. But it is not desirable that he should be full of it
also at his club. Had Captain Aylmer become Prime Minister, he would
no doubt, have made Low Church bishops. It was the side to which he
had taken himself in that matter,--not without good reasons. And
he could say a sharp word or two in season about vestments; he was
strong against candles, and fought for his side fairly well. No one
had good right to complain of Captain Aylmer as being insincere; but
had his aunt known the whole history of her nephew's life, I doubt
whether she would have made him her heir,--thinking that in doing so
she was doing the best for the good cause.

The whole history of her niece's life she did know, and she knew that
Clara was not with her, heart and soul. Had Clara left the old woman
in doubt on this subject, she would have been a hypocrite. Captain
Aylmer did not often spend a Sunday at Perivale, but when he did, he
went to church three times, and submitted himself to the yoke. He was
thinking of the borough votes quite as much as of his aunt's money,
and was carrying on his business after the fashion of men. But Clara
found herself compelled to maintain some sort of a fight, though she
also went to church three times on Sunday. And there was another
reason why Mrs. Winterfield thought it right to mention Captain
Aylmer's name to her niece on this occasion.

"I had hoped," she said, "that it might make no difference in what
way my money was left."

Clara well understood what this meant, as will, probably, the reader
also. "I can't say but what it will make a difference," she answered,
smiling; "but I shall always think that you have done right. Why
should I stand in Captain Aylmer's way?"

"I had hoped your ways might have been the same," said the old lady,
fretfully.

"But they cannot be the same."

"No; you do not see things as he sees them. Things that are serious
to him are, I fear, only light to you. Dear Clara, would I could
see you more in earnest as to the only matter that is worth our
earnestness." Miss Amedroz said nothing as to the Captain's
earnestness, though, perhaps, her ideas as to his ideas about
religion were more correct than those held by Mrs. Winterfield. But
it would not have suited her to raise any argument on that subject.
"I pray for you, Clara," continued the old lady; "and will do so as
long as the power of prayer is left to me. I hope,--I hope you do not
cease to pray for yourself?"

"I endeavour, aunt."

"It is an endeavour which, if really made, never fails."

Clara said nothing more, and her aunt also remained silent. Soon
afterwards, the four-wheeled carriage, with the demure stable-boy,
came to the door, and Clara was driven up and down through the
streets of Perivale in a manner which was an injury to her. She knew
that she was suffering an injustice, but it was one of which she
could not make complaint. She submitted to her aunt, enduring the
penances that were required of her; and, therefore, her aunt had
opportunity enough to see her shortcomings. Mrs. Winterfield did see
them, and judged her accordingly. Captain Aylmer, being a man and a
Member of Parliament, was called upon to bear no such penances, and,
therefore, his shortcomings were not suspected.

But, after all, what title had she ever possessed to entertain
expectations from Mrs. Winterfield? When she thought of it all in her
room that night, she told herself that it was strange that her aunt
should have spoken to her in such a way on such a subject. But, then,
so much had been said to her on the matter by her father, so much, no
doubt, had reached her aunt's ears also, the hope that her position
with reference to the rich widow at Perivale might be beneficial to
her had been so often discussed at Belton as a make-weight against
the extravagance of the heir, there had already been so much of this
mistake, that she taught herself to perceive that the communication
was needed. "In her honesty she has not chosen to leave me with false
hopes," said Clara to herself. And at that moment she loved her aunt
for her honesty.

Then, on the day but one following this conversation as to the
destiny of her aunt's property, came the terrible tidings of her
brother's death. Captain Aylmer, who had been in London at the time,
hurried down to Perivale, and had been the first to tell Miss Amedroz
what had happened. The words spoken between them then had not been
many, but Clara knew that Captain Aylmer had been kind to her; and
when he had offered to accompany her to Belton, she had thanked him
with a degree of gratitude which had almost seemed to imply more of
regard between them than Clara would have acknowledged to exist. But
in moments such as those, soft words may be spoken and hands may be
pressed without any of that meaning which soft words and the grasping
of hands generally carry with them. As far as Taunton Captain Aylmer
did go with Miss Amedroz, and there they parted, he on his journey up
to town, and she for her father's desolate house at Belton.




CHAPTER II.

THE HEIR PROPOSES TO VISIT HIS COUSINS.


It was full summer at Belton, and the sweet scent of the new hay
filled the porch of the old house with fragrance, as Clara sat there
alone with her work. Immediately before the house door, between that
and the old tower, there stood one of Farmer Stovey's hay-carts, now
empty, with an old horse between the shafts looking as though he were
asleep in the sun. Immediately beyond the tower the men were loading
another cart, and the women and children were chattering as they
raked the scattered remnants up to the rows. Under the shadow of the
old tower, but in sight of Clara as she sat in the porch, there lay
the small beer-barrels of the hay-makers, and three or four rakes
were standing erect against the old grey wall. It was now eleven
o'clock, and Clara was waiting for her father, who was not yet out
of his room. She had taken his breakfast to him in bed, as was her
custom; for he had fallen into idle ways, and the luxury of his bed
was, of all his remaining luxuries, the one that he liked the best.
After a while he came down to her, having an open letter in his hand.
Clara saw that he intended either to show it to her or to speak of
it, and asked him therefore, with some tone of interest in her voice,
from whom it had come. But Mr. Amedroz was fretful at the moment, and
instead of answering her began to complain of his tenant's ill-usage
of him.

"What has he got his cart there for? I haven't let him the road up to
the hall door. I suppose he will bring his things into the parlour
next."

"I rather like it, papa."

"Do you? I can only say that you're lucky in your tastes. I don't
like it, I can tell you."

"Mr. Stovey is out there. Shall I ask him to have the things moved
further off?"

"No, my dear,--no. I must bear it, as I do all the rest of it. What
does it matter? There'll be an end of it soon. He pays his rent, and
I suppose he is right to do as he pleases. But I can't say that I
like it."

"Am I to see the letter, papa?" she asked, wishing to turn his mind
from the subject of the hay-cart.

"Well, yes. I brought it for you to see; though perhaps I should be
doing better if I burned it, and said nothing more about it. It is a
most impudent production; and heartless,--very heartless."

Clara was accustomed to such complaints as these from her father.
Everything that everybody did around him he would call heartless.
The man pitied himself so much in his own misery, that he expected
to live in an atmosphere of pity from others; and though the pity
doubtless was there, he misdoubted it. He thought that Farmer Stovey
was cruel in that he had left the hay-cart near the house, to wound
his eyes by reminding him that he was no longer master of the ground
before his own hall door. He thought that the women and children were
cruel to chatter so near his ears. He almost accused his daughter of
cruelty, because she had told him that she liked the contiguity of
the hay-making. Under such circumstances as those which enveloped him
and her, was it not heartless in her to like anything? It seemed to
him that the whole world of Belton should be drowned in woe because
of his misery.

"Where is it from, papa?" she asked.

"There, you may read it. Perhaps it is better that you should know
that it has been written." Then she read the letter, which was as
follows:--

"Plaistow Hall, -- July, 186--."

Though she had never before seen the handwriting, she knew at once
from whence came the letter, for she had often heard of Plaistow
Hall. It was the name of the farm at which her distant cousin, Will
Belton, lived, and her father had more than once been at the trouble
of explaining to her, that though the place was called a hall, the
house was no more than a farmhouse. He had never seen Plaistow
Hall, and had never been in Norfolk; but so much he could take upon
himself to say, "They call all the farms halls down there." It was
not wonderful that he should dislike his heir; and, perhaps, not
unnatural that he should show his dislike after this fashion. Clara,
when she read the address, looked up into her father's face. "You
know who it is now," he said. And then she read the letter.


   Plaistow Hall, -- July, 186--.

   MY DEAR SIR,

   I have not written to you before since your bereavement,
   thinking it better to wait awhile; but I hope you have
   not taken me to be unkind in this, or have supposed me
   to be unmindful of your sorrow. Now I take up my pen,
   hoping that I may make you understand how greatly I was
   distressed by what has occurred. I believe I am now the
   nearest male relative that you have, and as such I am very
   anxious to be of service to you if it may be possible.
   Considering the closeness of our connection, and my
   position in reference to the property, it seems bad that
   we should never meet. I can assure you that you would find
   me very friendly if we could manage to come together.

   I should think nothing of running across to Belton, if you
   would receive me at your house. I could come very well
   before harvest, if that would suit you, and would stay
   with you for a week. Pray give my kindest regards to my
   cousin Clara, whom I can only just remember as a very
   little girl. She was with her aunt at Perivale when I was
   at Belton as a boy. She shall find a friend in me if she
   wants a friend.

   Your affectionate cousin,

   W. BELTON.


Clara read the letter very slowly, so that she might make herself
sure of its tone and bearing before she was called upon by her
father to express her feeling respecting it. She knew that she would
be expected to abuse it violently, and to accuse the writer of
vulgarity, insolence, and cruelty; but she had already learned that
she must not allow herself to accede to all her father's fantasies.
For his sake, and for his protection, it was necessary that she
should differ from him, and even contradict him. Were she not to do
so, he would fall into a state of wailing and complaining that would
exaggerate itself almost to idiotcy. And it was imperative that
she herself should exercise her own opinion on many points, almost
without reference to him. She alone knew how utterly destitute she
would be when he should die. He, in the first days of his agony, had
sobbed forth his remorse as to her ruin; but, even when doing so,
he had comforted himself with the remembrance of Mrs. Winterfield's
money, and Mrs. Winterfield's affection for his daughter. And the
aunt, when she had declared her purpose to Clara, had told herself
that the provision made for Clara by her father was sufficient. To
neither of them had Clara told her own position. She could not inform
her aunt that her father had given up to the poor reprobate who had
destroyed himself all that had been intended for her. Had she done so
she would have been asking her aunt for charity. Nor would she bring
herself to add to her father's misery, by destroying the hopes which
still supported him. She never spoke of her own position in regard
to money, but she knew that it had become her duty to live a wary,
watchful life, taking much upon herself in their impoverished
household, and holding her own opinion against her father's when her
doing so became expedient. So she finished the letter in silence, and
did not speak at the moment when the movement of her eyes declared
that she had completed the task.

"Well," said he.

"I do not think my cousin means badly."

"You don't! I do, then. I think he means very badly. What business
has he to write to me, talking of his position?"

"I can't see anything amiss in his doing so, papa. I think he wishes
to be friendly. The property will be his some day, and I don't see
why that should not be mentioned, when there is occasion."

"Upon my word, Clara, you surprise me. But women never understand
delicacy in regard to money. They have so little to do with it,
and think so little about it, that they have no occasion for such
delicacy."

Clara could not help the thought that to her mind the subject was
present with sufficient frequency to make delicacy very desirable,
if only it were practicable. But of this she said nothing. "And what
answer will you send to him, papa?" she asked.

"None at all. Why should I trouble myself to write to him?"

"I will take the trouble off your hands."

"And what will you say to him?"

"I will ask him to come here, as he proposes."

"Clara!"

"Why not, papa? He is the heir to the property, and why should he
not be permitted to see it? There are many things in which his
co-operation with you might be a comfort to you. I can't tell you
whether the tenants and people are treating you well, but he can do
so; and, moreover, I think he means to be kind. I do not see why
we should quarrel with our cousin because he is the heir to your
property. It is not through any doing of his own that he is so."

This reasoning had no effect upon Mr. Amedroz, but his daughter's
resolution carried the point against him in spite of his want of
reason. No letter was written that day, or on the next; but on the
day following a formal note was sent off by Clara, in which Mr.
Belton was told that Mr. Amedroz would be happy to receive him at
Belton Castle. The letter was written by the daughter, but the father
was responsible for the formality. He sat over her while she wrote
it, and nearly drove her distracted by discussing every word and
phrase. At last, Clara was so annoyed with her own production, that
she was almost tempted to write another letter unknown to her father;
but the formal note went.


   MY DEAR SIR,

   I am desired by my father to say that he will be happy
   to receive you at Belton Castle, at the time fixed by
   yourself.

   Yours truly,

   CLARA AMEDROZ.


There was no more than that, but that had the desired effect; and by
return of post there came a rejoinder, saying that Will Belton would
be at the Castle on the fifteenth of August. "They can do without me
for about ten days," he said in his postscript, writing in a familiar
tone, which did not seem to have been at all checked by the coldness
of his cousin's note,--"as our harvest will be late; but I must be
back for a week's work before the partridges."

"Heartless! quite heartless!" Mr. Amedroz said as he read this.
"Partridges! to talk of partridges at such a time as this!"

Clara, however, would not acknowledge that she agreed with her
father; but she could not altogether restrain a feeling on her own
part that her cousin's good humour towards her and Mr. Amedroz should
have been repressed by the tone of her letter to him. The man was to
come, however, and she would not judge of him until he was there.

In one house in the neighbourhood, and in only one, had Miss Amedroz
a friend with whom she was intimate; and as regarded even this single
friend, the intimacy was the effect rather of circumstances than of
real affection. She liked Mrs. Askerton, and saw her almost daily;
but she could hardly tell herself that she loved her neighbour.

In the little town of Belton, close to the church, there stood a
pretty, small house, called Belton Cottage. It was so near the church
that strangers always supposed it to be the parsonage; but the
rectory stood away out in the country, half a mile from the town,
on the road to Redicote, and was a large house, three stories high,
with grounds of its own, and very ugly. Here lived the old bachelor
rector, seventy years of age, given much to long absences when he
could achieve them, and never on good terms with his bishop. His two
curates lived at Redicote, where there was a second church. Belton
Cottage, which was occupied by Colonel Askerton and Mrs. Askerton,
was on the Amedroz property, and had been hired some two years since
by the Colonel, who was then a stranger in the country and altogether
unknown to the Belton people. But he had come there for shooting, and
therefore his coming had been understood. Even as long ago as two
years since, there had been neither use nor propriety in keeping the
shooting for the squire's son, and it had been let with the cottage
to Colonel Askerton. So Colonel Askerton had come there with his
wife, and no one in the neighbourhood had known anything about them.
Mr. Amedroz, with his daughter, had called upon them, and gradually
there had grown up an intimacy between Clara and Mrs. Askerton. There
was an opening from the garden of Belton Cottage into the park, so
that familiar intercourse was easy, and Mrs. Askerton was a woman who
knew well how to make herself pleasant to such another woman as Miss
Amedroz.

The reader may as well know at once that rumours prejudicial to the
Askertons reached Belton before they had been established there
for six months. At Taunton, which was twenty miles distant, these
rumours were very rife, and there were people there who knew with
accuracy,--though, probably without a grain of truth in their
accuracy,--every detail in the history of Mrs. Askerton's life. And
something, too, reached Clara's ears--something from old Mr. Wright,
the rector, who loved scandal, and was very ill-natured. "A very
nice woman," the rector had said; "but she does not seem to have any
belongings in particular." "She has got a husband," Clara had replied
with some little indignation, for she had never loved Mr. Wright.
"Yes; I suppose she has got a husband." Then Clara had, in her own
judgment, accused the rector of lying, evil-speaking, and slandering,
and had increased the measure of her cordiality to Mrs. Askerton. But
something more she had heard on the same subject at Perivale. "Before
you throw yourself into close intimacy with the lady, I think you
should know something about her," Mrs. Winterfield had said to her.
"I do know something about her; I know that she has the manners and
education of a lady, and that she is living affectionately with her
husband, who is devoted to her. What more ought I to know?" "If you
really do know all that, you know a great deal," Mrs. Winterfield had
replied.

"Do you know anything against her, aunt?" Clara asked, after a pause.

There was another pause before Mrs. Winterfield answered. "No
my dear; I cannot say that I do. But I think that young ladies,
before they make intimate friendships, should be very sure of their
friends."

"You have already acknowledged that I know a great deal about her,"
Clara replied. And then the conversation was at an end. Clara had not
been quite ingenuous, as she acknowledged to herself. She was aware
that her aunt would not permit herself to repeat rumours as to the
truth of which she had no absolute knowledge. She understood that the
weakness of her aunt's caution was due to the old lady's sense of
charity and dislike of slander. But Clara had buckled on her armour
for Mrs. Askerton, and was glad, therefore, to achieve her little
victory. When we buckle on our armour in any cause, we are apt to
go on buckling it, let the cause become as weak as it may; and
Clara continued her intimacy with Mrs. Askerton, although there was
something in the lady's modes of speech, and something also in her
modes of thinking, which did not quite satisfy the aspirations of
Miss Amedroz as to a friend.

Colonel Askerton himself was a pleasant, quiet man, who seemed to
be contented with the life which he was leading. For six weeks in
April and May he would go up to town, leaving Mrs. Askerton at the
cottage,--as to which, probably jovial, absence in the metropolis
there seemed to be no spirit of grudging on the part of the wife. On
the first of September a friend would come to the cottage and remain
there for six weeks' shooting; and during the winter the Colonel and
his wife always went to Paris for a fortnight. Such had been their
life for the last two years; and thus,--so said Mrs. Askerton to
Clara,--did they intend to live as long as they could keep the
cottage at Belton. Society at Belton they had none, and,--as they
said,--desired none. Between them and Mr. Wright there was only a
speaking acquaintance. The married curate at Redicote would not
let his wife call on Mrs. Askerton, and the unmarried curate was a
hard-worked, clerical hack,--a parochial minister at all times and
seasons, who went to no houses except the houses of the poor, and who
would hold communion with no man, and certainly with no woman, who
would not put up with clerical admonitions for Sunday backslidings.
Mr. Amedroz himself neither received guests nor went as a guest to
other men's houses. He would occasionally stand for a while at the
gate of the Colonel's garden, and repeat the list of his own woes as
long as his neighbour would stand there to hear it. But there was no
society at Belton, and Clara, as far as she herself was aware, was
the only person with whom Mrs. Askerton held any social intercourse,
except what she might have during her short annual holiday in Paris.

"Of course, you are right," she said, when Clara told her of the
proposed coming of Mr. Belton. "If he turn out to be a good fellow,
you will have gained a great deal. And should he be a bad fellow,
you will have lost nothing. In either case you will know him, and
considering how he stands towards you, that itself is desirable."

"But if he should annoy papa?"

"In your papa's condition, my dear, the coming of any one will annoy
him. At least, he will say so; though I do not in the least doubt
that he will like the excitement better even than you will."

"I can't say there will be much excitement to me."

"No excitement in a young man's coming into the house! Without
shocking your propriety, allow me to say that that is impossible. Of
course, he is coming to see whether he can't make matters all right
by marrying you."

"That's nonsense, Mrs. Askerton."

"Very well. Let it be nonsense. But why shouldn't he? It's just what
he ought to do. He hasn't got a wife; and, as far as I know, you
haven't got a lover."

"I certainly have not got a lover."

"Our religious nephew at Perivale does not seem to be of any use."

"I wish, Mrs. Askerton, you would not speak of Captain Aylmer in that
way. I don't know any man whom I like so much, or at any rate better,
than Captain Aylmer; but I hate the idea that no girl can become
acquainted with an unmarried man without having her name mentioned
with his, and having to hear ill-natured remarks of that kind."

"I hope you will learn to like this other man much better. Think how
nice it will be to be mistress of the old place after all. And then
to go back to the old family name! If I were you I would make up my
mind not to let him leave the place till I had brought him to my
feet."

"If you go on like that I will not speak to you about him again."

"Or rather not to my feet,--for gentlemen have laid aside the humble
way of making love for the last twenty years at least; but I don't
know whether the women haven't gained quite as much by the change as
the men."

"As I know nothing will stop you when you once get into a vein of
that kind, I shall go," said Clara. "And till this man has come and
gone I shall not mention his name again in your presence."

"So be it," said Mrs. Askerton; "but as I will promise to say nothing
more about him, you need not go on his account." But Clara had got
up, and did leave the cottage at once.




CHAPTER III.

WILL BELTON.


Mr. Belton came to the castle, and nothing further had been said at
the cottage about his coming. Clara had seen Mrs. Askerton in the
meantime frequently, but that lady had kept her promise--almost to
Clara's disappointment. For she--though she had in truth disliked the
proposition that her cousin could be coming with any special views
with reference to herself had nevertheless sufficient curiosity about
the stranger to wish to talk about him. Her father, indeed, mentioned
Belton's name very frequently, saying something with reference to him
every time he found himself in his daughter's presence. A dozen times
he said that the man was heartless to come to the house at such a
time, and he spoke of his cousin always as though the man were guilty
of a gross injustice in being heir to the property. But not the less
on that account did he fidget himself about the room in which Belton
was to sleep, about the food that Belton was to eat, and especially
about the wine that Belton was to drink. What was he to do for wine?
The stock of wine in the cellars at Belton Castle was, no doubt, very
low. The squire himself drank a glass or two of port daily, and had
some remnant of his old treasures by him, which might perhaps last
him his time; and occasionally there came small supplies of sherry
from the grocer at Taunton; but Mr. Amedroz pretended to think that
Will Belton would want champagne and claret;--and he would continue
to make these suggestions in spite of his own repeated complaints
that the man was no better than an ordinary farmer. "I've no doubt
he'll like beer," said Clara. "Beer!" said her father, and then
stopped himself, as though he were lost in doubt whether it would
best suit him to scorn his cousin for having so low a taste as that
suggested on his behalf, or to ridicule his daughter's idea that the
household difficulty admitted of so convenient a solution.

The day of the arrival at last came, and Clara certainly was in a
twitter, although she had steadfastly resolved that she would be in
no twitter at all. She had told her aunt by letter of the proposed
visit, and Mrs. Winterfield had expressed her approbation, saying
that she hoped it would lead to good results. Of what good results
could her aunt be thinking? The one probable good result would
surely be this--that relations so nearly connected should know each
other. Why should there be any fuss made about such a visit? But,
nevertheless, Clara, though she made no outward fuss, knew that
inwardly she was not as calm about the man's coming as she would have
wished herself to be.

He arrived about five o'clock in a gig from Taunton. Five was the
ordinary dinner hour at Belton, but it had been postponed till six on
this day, in the hope that the cousin might make his appearance at
any rate by that hour. Mr. Amedroz had uttered various complaints
as to the visitor's heartlessness in not having written to name the
hour of his arrival, and was manifestly intending to make the most of
the grievance should he not present himself before six;--but this
indulgence was cut short by the sound of the gig wheels. Mr. Amedroz
and his daughter were sitting in a small drawing-room, which looked
out to the front of the house and he, seated in his accustomed
chair, near the window, could see the arrival. For a moment or two
he remained quiet in his chair, as though he would not allow so
insignificant a thing as his cousin's coming to ruffle him;--but he
could not maintain this dignified indifference, and before Belton was
out of the gig he had shuffled out into the hall.

Clara followed her father almost unconsciously and soon found herself
shaking hands with a big man, over six feet high, broad in the
shoulders, large limbed, with bright quick grey eyes, a large mouth,
teeth almost too perfect and a well-formed nose, with thick short
brown hair and small whiskers which came but half-way down his
cheeks--a decidedly handsome man with a florid face, but still,
perhaps, with something of the promised roughness of the farmer. But
a more good-humoured looking countenance Clara felt at once that she
had never beheld.

"And you are the little girl that I remember when I was a boy at Mr.
Folliott's?" he said. His voice was clear, and rather loud, but it
sounded very pleasantly in that sad old house.

"Yes; I am the little girl," said Clara, smiling.

"Dear, dear! and that's twenty years ago now," said he.

"But you oughtn't to remind me of that, Mr. Belton."

"Oughtn't I? Why not?"

"Because it shows how very old I am."

"Ah, yes;--to be sure. But there's nobody here that signifies. How
well I remember this room;--and the old tower out there. It isn't
changed a bit!"

"Not to the outward eye, perhaps," said the squire.

"That's what I mean. So they're making hay still. Our hay has been
all up these three weeks. I didn't know you ever meadowed the park."
Here he trod with dreadful severity upon the corns of Mr. Amedroz,
but he did not perceive it. And when the squire muttered something
about a tenant, and the inconvenience of keeping land in his own
hands, Belton would have gone on with the subject had not Clara
changed the conversation. The squire complained bitterly of this to
Clara when they were alone, saying that it was very heartless.

She had a little scheme of her own,--a plan arranged for the saying
of a few words to her cousin on the earliest opportunity of their
being alone together,--and she contrived that this should take place
within half an hour after his arrival, as he went through the hall
up to his room. "Mr. Belton," she said, "I'm sure you will not take
it amiss if I take a cousin's privilege at once and explain to you
something of our way of living here. My dear father is not very
strong."

"He is much altered since I saw him last."

"Oh, yes. Think of all that he has had to bear! Well, Mr. Belton,
the fact is, that we are not so well off as we used to be, and are
obliged to live in a very quiet way. You will not mind that?"

"Who? I?"

"I take it very kind of you, your coming all this way to see us--"

"I'd have come three times the distance."

"But you must put up with us as you find us, you know. The truth is
we are very poor."

"Well, now;--that's just what I wanted to know. One couldn't write
and ask such a question; but I was sure I should find out if I came."

"You've found it out already, you see."

"As for being poor, it's a thing I don't think very much about,--not
for young people. But it isn't comfortable when a man gets old. Now
what I want to know is this; can't something be done?"

"The only thing to do is to be very kind to him. He has had to let
the park to Mr. Stovey, and he doesn't like talking about it."

"But if it isn't talked about, how can it be mended?"

"It can't be mended."

"We'll see about that. But I'll be kind to him; you see if I ain't.
And I'll tell you what, I'll be kind to you too, if you'll let me.
You have got no brother now."

"No," said Clara; "I have got no brother now." Belton was looking
full into her face, and saw that her eyes had become clouded with
tears.

"I will be your brother," said he. "You see if I don't. When I say
a thing I mean it. I will be your brother." And he took her hand,
caressing it, and showing her that he was not in the least afraid
of her. He was blunt in his bearing, saying things which her father
would have called indelicate and heartless, as though they gave
him no effort, and placing himself at once almost in a position of
ascendency. This Clara had not intended. She had thought that her
farmer cousin, in spite of the superiority of his prospects as heir
to the property, would have acceded to her little hints with silent
acquiescence; but instead of this he seemed prepared to take upon
himself the chief part in the play that was to be acted between them.
"Shall it be so?" he said, still holding her hand.

"You are very kind."

"I will be more than kind; I will love you dearly if you will let me.
You don't suppose that I have looked you up here for nothing. Blood
is thicker than water, and you have nobody now so near to you as I
am. I don't see why you should be so poor, as the debts have been
paid."

"Papa has had to borrow money on his life interest in the place."

"That's the mischief! Never mind. We'll see if we can't do something.
And in the meantime don't make a stranger of me. Anything does for
me. Lord bless you! if you were to see how I rough it sometimes!
I can eat beans and bacon with any one; and what's more, I can go
without 'em if I can't get 'em."

"We'd better get ready for dinner now. I always dress, because papa
likes to see it." This she said as a hint to her cousin that he
would be expected to change his coat, for her father would have been
annoyed had his guest sat down to dinner without such ceremony. Will
Belton was not very good at taking hints; but he did understand this,
and made the necessary change in his apparel.

The evening was long and dull, and nothing occurred worthy of remark
except the surprise manifested by Mr. Amedroz when Belton called his
daughter by her Christian name. This he did without the slightest
hesitation, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for
him to do. She was his cousin, and cousins of course addressed each
other in that way. Clara's quick eye immediately saw her father's
slight gesture of dismay, but Belton caught nothing of this. The
squire took an early opportunity of calling him Mr. Belton with some
little peculiarity of expression; but this was altogether lost upon
Will, who five times in the next five minutes addressed "Clara" as
though they were already on the most intimate terms. She would have
answered him in the same way, and would have called him Will, had she
not been afraid of offending her father.

Mr. Amedroz had declared his purpose of coming down to breakfast
during the period of his cousin's visit, and at half-past nine he was
in the parlour. Clara had been there some time, but had not seen her
cousin. He entered the room immediately after her father, bringing
his hat with him in his hand, and wiping the drops of perspiration
from his brow. "You have been out, Mr. Belton," said the squire.

"All round the place, sir. Six o'clock doesn't often find me in bed,
summer or winter. What's the use of laying in bed when one has had
enough of sleep?"

"But that's just the question," said Clara; "whether one has had
enough at six o'clock."

"Women want more than men, of course. A man, if he means to do any
good with land, must be out early. The grass will grow of itself at
nights, but it wants looking after as soon as the daylight comes."

"I don't know that it would do much good to the grass here," said the
squire, mournfully.

"As much here as anywhere. And indeed I've got something to say about
that." He had now seated himself at the breakfast-table, and was
playing with his knife and fork. "I think, sir, you're hardly making
the best you can out of the park."

"We won't mind talking about it, if you please," said the squire.

"Well; of course I won't, if you don't like it; but upon my word you
ought to look about you; you ought indeed."

"In what way do you mean?" said Clara.

"If your father doesn't like to keep the land in his own hands, he
should let it to some one who would put stock in it,--not go on
cutting it year after year, and putting nothing back, as this fellow
will do. I've been talking to Stovey, and that's just what he means."

"Nobody here has got money to put stock on the land," said the
squire, angrily.

"Then you should look for somebody somewhere else. That's all. I'll
tell you what now, Mr. Amedroz, I'll do it myself." By this time he
had helped himself to two large slices of cold mutton, and was eating
his breakfast and talking with an equal amount of energy for either
occupation.

"That's out of the question," said the squire.

"I don't see why it should be out of the question. It would be better
for you,--and better for me too, if this place is ever to be mine."
On hearing this the squire winced, but said nothing. This terrible
fellow was so vehemently outspoken that the poor old man was
absolutely unable to keep pace with him,--even to the repeating
of his wish that the matter should be talked of no further. "I'll
tell you what I'll do, now," continued Belton. "There's altogether,
outside the palings and in, about a hundred and fifty acres of
it. I'll give you one pound two and sixpence an acre, and I won't
cut an acre of grass inside the park;--no, nor much of it outside
either;--only just enough to give me a little fodder for the cattle
in winter."

"And give up Plaistow Hall?" asked Clara.

"Lord love you, no. I've a matter of nine hundred acres on hand
there, and most of it under the plough. I've counted it up, and it
would just cost me a thousand pounds to stock this place. I should
come and look at it twice a year or so, and I should see my money
home again, if I didn't get any profit out of it."

Mr. Amedroz was astonished. The man had only been in his house one
night, and was proposing to take all his troubles off his hands. He
did not relish the proposition at all. He did not like to be accused
of not doing as well for himself as others could do for him. He did
not wish to make any change,--although he remembered at the moment
his anger with Farmer Stovey respecting the haycarts. He did not
desire that the heir should have any immediate interest in the place.
But he was not strong enough to meet the proposition with a direct
negative. "I couldn't get rid of Stovey in that way," he said,
plaintively.

"I've settled it all with Stovey already," said Belton. "He'll be
glad enough to walk off with a twenty-pound note, which I'll give
him. He can't make money out of the place. He hasn't got means to
stock it, and then see the wages that hay-making runs away with! He'd
lose by it even at what he's paying, and he knows it. There won't be
any difficulty about Stovey."

By twelve o'clock on that day Mr. Stovey had been brought into the
house, and had resigned the land. It had been let to Mr. William
Belton at an increased rental,--a rental increased by nearly forty
pounds per annum,--and that gentleman had already made many of his
arrangements for entering upon his tenancy. The twenty pounds had
already been paid to Stovey, and the transaction was complete. Mr.
Amedroz sat in his chair bewildered, dismayed--and, as he himself
declared,--shocked, quite shocked, at the precipitancy of the young
man. It might be for the best. He didn't know. He didn't feel at
all sure. But such hurrying in such a matter was, under all the
circumstances of the family, to say the least of it, very indelicate.
He was angry with himself for having yielded, and angry with Clara
for having allowed him to do so. "It doesn't signify much," he said,
at last. "Of course he'll have it all to himself before long."

"But, papa, it really seems to be a much better arrangement for you.
You'll get more money--"

"Money is not everything, my dear."

"But you'd sooner have Mr. Belton, our own cousin, about the place,
than Mr. Stovey."

"I don't know. We shall see. The thing is done now, and there is
no use in complaining. I must say he hasn't shown a great deal of
delicacy."

On that afternoon Belton asked Clara to go out with him, and walk
round the place. He had been again about the grounds, and had made
plans, and counted up capabilities, and calculated his profit and
losses. "If you don't dislike scrambling about," said he, "I'll show
you everything that I intend to do."

"But I can't have any changes made, Mr. Belton," said Mr. Amedroz,
with some affectation of dignity in his manner. "I won't have the
fences moved, or anything of that kind."

"Nothing shall be done, sir, that you don't approve. I'll just manage
it all as if I was acting as your own--bailiff." "Son," he was going
to say, but he remembered the fate of his cousin Charles just in time
to prevent the use of the painful word.

"I don't want to have anything done," said Mr. Amedroz.

"Then nothing shall be done. We'll just mend a fence or two, to keep
in the cattle, and leave other things as they are. But perhaps Clara
will walk out with me all the same."

Clara was quite ready to walk out, and had already tied on her hat
and taken her parasol.

"Your father is a little nervous," said he, as soon as they were
beyond hearing of the house.

"Can you wonder at it, when you remember all that he has suffered?"

"I don't wonder at it in the least; and I don't wonder at his
disliking me either."

"I don't think he dislikes you, Mr. Belton."

"Oh, but he does. Of course he does. I'm the heir to the place
instead of you. It is natural that he should dislike me. But I'll
live it down. You see if I don't. I'll make him so fond of me, he'll
always want to have me here. I don't mind a little dislike to begin
with."

"You're a wonderful man, Mr. Belton."

"I wish you wouldn't call me Mr. Belton. But of course you must do
as you please about that. If I can make him call me Will, I suppose
you'll call me so too."

"Oh, yes; then I will."

"It don't much matter what a person is called; does it? Only one
likes to be friendly with one's friends. I suppose you don't like my
calling you Clara."

"Now you've begun you had better go on."

"I mean to. I make it a rule never to go back in the world. Your
father is half sorry that he has agreed about the place; but I shan't
let him off now. And I'll tell you what. In spite of what he says,
I'll have it as different as possible before this time next year.
Why, there's lots of timber that ought to come out of the plantation;
and there's places where the roots want stubbing up horribly. These
things always pay for themselves if they are properly done. Any good
done in the world always pays." Clara often remembered those words
afterwards when she was thinking of her cousin's character. Any good
done in the world always pays!

"But you mustn't offend my father, even though it should do good,"
she said.

"I understand," he answered. "I won't tread on his toes. Where do you
get your milk and butter?"

"We buy them."

"From Stovey, I suppose."

"Yes; from Mr. Stovey. It goes against the rent."

"And it ought to go against the grain too,--living in the country and
paying for milk! I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a cow.
It shall be a little present from me to you." He said nothing of
the more important present which this would entail upon him in the
matter of the grass for the cow; but she understood the nature of the
arrangement, and was anxious to prevent it.

"Oh, Mr. Belton, I think we'd better not attempt that," she said.

"But we will attempt it. I've pledged myself to do nothing to oppose
your father; but I've made no such promise as to you. We'll have a
cow before I'm many days older. What a pretty place this is! I do
like these rocks so much, and it is such a comfort to be off the
flat."

"It is pretty."

"Very pretty. You've no conception what an ugly place Plaistow is.
The land isn't actual fen now, but it was once. And it's quite flat.
And there is a great dike, twenty feet wide, oozing through it,--just
oozing, you know; and lots of little dikes, at right angles with the
big one. And the fields are all square. And there are no hedges,--and
hardly a tree to be seen in the place."

"What a picture you have drawn! I should commit suicide if I lived
there."

"Not if you had so much to do as I have."

"And what is the house like?"

"The house is good enough,--an old-fashioned manor-house, with high
brick chimneys, and brick gables, tiled all over, and large square
windows set in stone. The house is good enough, only it stands in the
middle of a farm-yard. I said there were no trees, but there is an
avenue."

"Come, that's something."

"It was an old family seat, and they used to have avenues in those
days; but it doesn't lead up to the present hall door. It comes
sideways up to the farm-yard; so that the whole thing must have
been different once, and there must have been a great court-yard.
In Elizabeth's time Plaistow Manor was rather a swell place, and
belonged to some Roman Catholics who came to grief, and then the
Howards got it. There's a whole history about it, only I don't much
care about those things."

"And is it yours now?"

"It's between me and my uncle, and I pay him rent for his part. He's
a clergyman you know, and he has a living in Lincolnshire,--not far
off."

"And do you live alone in that big house?"

"There's my sister. You've heard of Mary;--haven't you?"

Then Clara remembered that there was a Miss Belton,--a poor sickly
creature, with a twisted spine and a hump back, as to whose welfare
she ought to have made inquiries.

"Oh, yes; of course," said Clara. "I hope she's better than she used
to be,--when we heard of her."

"She'll never be better. But then she does not become much worse.
I think she does grow a little weaker. She's older than I am, you
know,--two years older; but you would think she was quite an old
woman to look at her." Then, for the next half-hour, they talked
about Mary Belton as they visited every corner of the place. Belton
still had an eye to business as he went on talking, and Clara
remarked how many sticks he moved as he went, how many stones he
kicked on one side, and how invariably he noted any defect in the
fences. But still he talked of his sister, swearing that she was as
good as gold, and at last wiping away the tears from his eyes as he
described her maladies. "And yet I believe she is better off than any
of us," he said, "because she is so good." Clara began to wish that
she had called him Will from the beginning, because she liked him
so much. He was just the man to have for a cousin,--a true loving
cousin, stalwart, self-confident, with a grain or two of tyranny in
his composition as becomes a man in relation to his intimate female
relatives; and one, moreover, with whom she could trust herself to
be familiar without any danger of love-making! She saw his character
clearly, and told herself that she understood it perfectly. He was a
jewel of a cousin, and she must begin to call him Will as speedily as
possible.

At last they came round in their walk to the gate leading into
Colonel Askerton's garden; and here in the garden, close to the gate,
they found Mrs. Askerton. I fancy that she had been watching for
them, or at any rate watching for Clara, so that she might know how
her friend was carrying herself with her cousin. She came at once to
the wicket, and there she was introduced by Clara to Mr. Belton. Mr.
Belton as he made his bow muttered something awkwardly, and seemed
to lose his self-possession for the moment. Mrs. Askerton was very
gracious to him, and she knew well how to be both gracious and
ungracious. She talked about the scenery, and the charms of the
old place, and the dullness of the people around them, and the
inexpediency of looking for society in country places; till after
awhile Mr. Belton was once more at his ease.

"How is Colonel Askerton?" asked Clara.

"He's in-doors. Will you come and see him? He's reading a French
novel, as usual. It's the only thing he ever does in summer. Do you
ever read French novels, Mr. Belton?"

"I read very little at all, and when I do I read English."

"Ah, you're a man who has a pursuit in life, no doubt."

"I should rather think so,--that is, if you mean, by a pursuit,
earning my bread. A man has not much time for French novels with a
thousand acres of land on his hands; even if he knew how to read
French, which I don't."

"But you're not always at work on your farm?"

"It's pretty constant, Mrs. Askerton. Then I shoot, and hunt."

"You're a sportsman?"

"All men living in the country are,--more or less."

"Colonel Askerton shoots a great deal. He has the shooting of Belton,
you know. He'll be delighted, I'm sure, to see you if you are here
some time in September. But you, coming from Norfolk, would not care
for partridge-shooting in Somersetshire."

"I don't see why it shouldn't be as good here as there."

"Colonel Askerton thinks he has got a fair head of game upon the
place."

"I dare say. Game is easily kept if people knew how to set about it."

"Colonel Askerton has a very good keeper, and has gone to a great
deal of expense since he has been here."

"I'm my own head-keeper," said Belton; "and so I will be,--or rather
should be, if I had this place."

Something in the lady's tone had grated against his feelings and
offended him; or perhaps he thought that she assumed too many of the
airs of proprietorship because the shooting of the place had been let
to her husband for thirty pounds a-year.

"I hope you don't mean to say you'll turn us out," said Mrs.
Askerton, laughing.

"I have no power to turn anybody out or in," said he. "I've got
nothing to do with it."

Clara, perceiving that matters were not going quite pleasantly
between her old and new friend, thought it best to take her
departure. Belton, as he went, lifted his hat from his head, and
Clara could not keep herself from thinking that he was not only very
handsome, but that he looked very much like a gentleman, in spite of
his occupation as a farmer.

"By-bye, Clara," said Mrs. Askerton; "come down and see me to-morrow,
there's a dear. Don't forget what a dull life I have of it." Clara
said that she would come. "And I shall be so happy to see Mr. Belton
if he will call before he leaves you." At this Belton again raised
his hat from his head, and muttered some word or two of civility. But
this, his latter muttering, was different from the first, for he had
altogether regained his presence of mind.

"You didn't seem to get on very well with my friend," said Clara,
laughing, as soon as they had turned away from the cottage.

"Well, no;--that is to say, not particularly well or particularly
badly. At first I took her for somebody else I knew slightly ever so
long ago, and I was thinking of that other person at the time."

"And what was the other person's name?"

"I can't even remember that at the present moment."

"Mrs. Askerton was a Miss Oliphant."

"That wasn't the other lady's name. But, independently of that, they
can't be the same. The other lady married a Mr. Berdmore."

"A Mr. Berdmore!" Clara as she repeated the name felt convinced that
she had heard it before, and that she had heard it in connection
with Mrs. Askerton. She certainly had heard the name of Berdmore
pronounced, or had seen it written, or had in some shape come across
the name in Mrs. Askerton's presence; or at any rate somewhere on
the premises occupied by that lady. More than this she could not
remember; but the name, as she had now heard it from her cousin,
became at once distinctly connected in her memory with her friends at
the cottage.

"Yes," said Belton; "a Mr. Berdmore. I knew more of him than of her,
though for the matter of that, I knew very little of him either. She
was a fast-going girl, and his friends were very sorry. But I think
they are both dead or divorced, or that they have come to grief in
some way."

"And is Mrs. Askerton like the fast-going lady?"

"In a certain way. Not that I remember what the fast-going lady was
like; but there was something about this woman that put me in mind of
the other. Vigo was her name; now I recollect it,--a Miss Vigo. It's
nine or ten years ago now, and I was little more than a boy."

"Her name was Oliphant."

"I don't suppose they have anything to do with each other. What riled
me was the way she talked of the shooting. People do when they take
a little shooting. They pay some trumpery thirty or forty pounds a
year, and then they seem to think that it's almost the same as though
they owned the property themselves. I've known a man talk of his
manor because he had the shooting of a wood and a small farm round
it. They are generally shopkeepers out of London, gin distillers, or
brewers, or people like that."

"Why, Mr. Belton, I didn't think you could be so furious!"

"Can't I? When my back's up, it is up! But it isn't up yet."

"And I hope it won't be up while you remain in Somersetshire."

"I won't answer for that. There's Stovey's empty cart standing
just where it stood yesterday; and he promised he'd have it home
before three to-day. My back will be up with him if he doesn't mind
himself."

It was nearly six o'clock when they got back to the house, and Clara
was surprised to find that she had been out three hours with her
cousin. Certainly it had been very pleasant. The usual companion
of her walks, when she had a companion, was Mrs. Askerton; but Mrs.
Askerton did not like real walking. She would creep about the grounds
for an hour or so, and even such companionship as that was better to
Clara than absolute solitude; but now she had been carried about the
place, getting over stiles and through gates, and wandering through
the copses, till she was tired and hungry, and excited and happy.
"Oh, papa," she said, "we have had such a walk!"

"I thought we were to have dined at five," he replied, in a low
wailing voice.

"No, papa, indeed,--indeed you said six."

"That was for yesterday."

"You said we were to make it six while Mr. Belton was here."

"Very well;--if it must be, I suppose it must be."

"You don't mean on my account," said Will. "I'll undertake to eat
my dinner, sir, at any hour that you'll undertake to give it me. If
there's a strong point about me at all, it is my appetite."

Clara, when she went to her father's room that evening, told him what
Mr. Belton had said about the shooting, knowing that her father's
feelings would agree with those which had been expressed by her
cousin. Mr. Amedroz of course made this an occasion for further
grumbling, suggesting that Belton wanted to get the shooting for
himself as he had got the farm. But, nevertheless, the effect which
Clara had intended was produced, and before she left him he had
absolutely proposed that the shooting and the land should go
together.

"I'm sure that Mr. Belton doesn't mean that at all," said Clara.

"I don't care what he means," said the squire.

"And it wouldn't do to treat Colonel Askerton in that way," said
Clara.

"I shall treat him just as I like," said the squire.




CHAPTER IV.

SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING.


A dear cousin, and safe against love-making! This was Clara's verdict
respecting Will Belton, as she lay thinking of him in bed that night.
Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue in her eyes
I cannot, perhaps, explain. But all young ladies are apt to talk
to themselves in such phrases about gentlemen with whom they are
thrown into chance intimacy;--as though love-making were in itself
a thing injurious and antagonistic to happiness, instead of being,
as it is, the very salt of life. Safe against love-making! And yet
Mrs. Askerton, her friend, had spoken of the probability of such
love-making as being the great advantage of his coming. And there
could not be a second opinion as to the expediency of a match between
her and her cousin in a worldly point of view. Clara, moreover,
had already perceived that he was a man fit to guide a wife, very
good-humoured,--and good-tempered also, anxious to give pleasure to
others, a man of energy and forethought, who would be sure to do well
in the world and hold his head always high among his fellows;--as
good a husband as a girl could have. Nevertheless, she congratulated
herself in that she felt satisfied that he was safe against
love-making! Might it be possible that that pressing of hands at
Taunton had been so tender, and those last words spoken with Captain
Aylmer so soft, that on his account she felt delighted to think that
her cousin was warranted not to make love?

And what did Will Belton think about his cousin, insured as he was
thus supposed to be against the dangers of love? He, also, lay awake
for awhile that night, thinking over this new friendship. Or rather
he thought of it walking about his room, and looking out at the
bright harvest moon;--for with him to be in bed was to be asleep.
He sat himself down, and he walked about, and he leaned out of the
window into the cool night air; and he made some comparisons in his
mind, and certain calculations; and he thought of his present home,
and of his sister, and of his future prospects as they were concerned
with the old place at which he was now staying; and he portrayed to
himself, in his mind, Clara's head and face and figure and feet;--and
he resolved that she should be his wife. He had never seen a girl who
seemed to suit him so well. Though he had only been with her for a
day, he swore to himself that he knew he could love her. Nay;--he
swore to himself that he did love her. Then,--when he had quite made
up his mind, he tumbled into his bed and was asleep in five minutes.

Miss Amedroz was a handsome young woman, tall, well-made, active, and
full of health. She carried herself as though she thought her limbs
were made for use, and not simply for ease upon a sofa. Her head and
neck stood well upon her shoulders, and her waist showed none of
those waspish proportions of which ladies used to be more proud than
I believe them to be now, in their more advanced state of knowledge
and taste. There was much about her in which she was like her cousin,
as though the blood they had in common between them had given to both
the same proportions and the same comeliness. Her hair was of a dark
brown colour, as was his. Her eyes were somewhat darker than his,
and perhaps not so full of constant movement; but they were equally
bright, and possessed that quick power of expressing tenderness which
belonged to them. Her nose was more finely cut, as was also her chin,
and the oval of her face; but she had the same large expressive
mouth, and the same perfection of ivory-white teeth. As has been said
before, Clara Amedroz, who was now nearly twenty-six years of age,
was not a young-looking young woman. To the eyes of many men that
would have been her fault; but in the eyes of Belton it was no fault.
He had not made himself fastidious as to women by much consort with
them, and he was disposed to think that she who was to become his
wife had better be something more than a girl not long since taken
out of the nursery. He was well to do in the world, and could
send his wife out in her carriage, with all becoming bravery of
appurtenances. And he would do so, too, when he should have a wife.
But still he would look to his wife to be a useful partner to him.
She should be a woman not above agricultural solicitude, or too proud
to have a care for her cows. Clara, he was sure, had no false pride;
and yet,--as he was sure also, she was at every point such a lady as
would do honour to the carriage and the bravery when it should be
forthcoming. And then such a marriage as this would put an end to all
the trouble which he felt in reference to the entail on the estate.
He knew that he was to be master of Belton, and of course had,
in that knowledge, the satisfaction which men do feel from the
consciousness of their future prosperity. And this with him was
enhanced by a strong sympathy with old-fashioned prejudices as to
family. He would be Belton of Belton; and there had been Beltons of
Belton in old days, for a longer time backwards than he was able to
count. But still the prospect had not been without its alloy, and he
had felt real distress at the idea of turning his cousin out of her
father's house. Such a marriage as that he now contemplated would put
all these things right.

When he got up in the morning he was quite as keen about it as he had
been on the previous evening;--and as he thought about it the more,
he became keener and still more keen. On the previous evening, as he
was leaning out of the window endeavouring to settle in his own mind
what would be the proper conduct of the romance of the thing, he had
considered that he had better not make his proposal quite at once.
He was to remain eight days at Belton, and as eight days was not a
long period of acquaintance, he had reflected that it might be well
for him to lay what foundation for love it might be in his power to
construct during his present sojourn, and then return and complete
the work before Christmas. But as he was shaving himself, the
habitual impatience of his nature predominated, and he became
disposed to think that delay would be useless, and might perhaps be
dangerous. It might be possible that Clara would be unable to give
him a decisive answer so quickly as to enable him to return home an
accepted lover; but if such doubt were left, such doubt would give
him an excuse for a speedy return to Belton. He did not omit to tell
himself that very probably he might not succeed at all. He was a man
not at all apt to feel assurance that he could carry all before him
in love. But in this matter, as in all others which required from him
any personal effort, he prepared himself to do his best, leaving the
consequences to follow as they might. When he threw his seed corn
into the earth with all such due appliances of agricultural skill and
industry as his capital and experience enabled him to use, he did his
part towards the production of next year's crop; and after that he
must leave it to a higher Power to give to him, or to withhold from
him, the reward of his labour. He had found that, as a rule, the
reward had been given when the labour had been honest; and he was now
prepared to follow the same plan, with the same hopes, in this matter
of his love-making.

After much consideration,--very much consideration, a consideration
which took him the whole time that he was brushing his hair and
washing his teeth,--he resolved that he would, in the first instance,
speak to Mr. Amedroz. Not that he intended that the father should win
the daughter for him. He had an idea that he would like to do that
work for himself. But he thought that the old squire would be better
pleased if his consent were asked in the first instance. The present
day was Sunday, and he would not speak on the subject till Monday.
This day he would devote to the work of securing his future
father-in-law's good opinion; to that,--and to his prayers.

And he had gained very much upon Mr. Amedroz before the evening
of the day was over. He was a man before whom difficulties seemed
to yield, and who had his own way simply because he had become
accustomed to ask for it,--to ask for it and to work for it. He had
so softened the squire's tone of thought towards him, that the future
stocking of the land was spoken of between them with something like
energy on both sides; and Mr. Amedroz had given his consent, without
any difficulty, to the building of a shed for winter stall-feeding.
Clara sat by listening, and perceived that Will Belton would soon be
allowed to do just what he pleased with the place. Her father talked
as she had not heard him talk since her poor brother's death, and
was quite animated on the subject of woodcraft. "We don't know much
about timber down where I am," said Will, "just because we've got no
trees."

"I'll show you your way," said the old man. "I've managed the timber
on the estate myself for the last forty years." Will Belton of course
did not say a word as to the gross mismanagement which had been
apparent even to him. What a cousin he was! Clara thought,--what a
paragon among cousins! And then he was so manifestly safe against
love-making! So safe, that he only cared to talk about timber, and
oxen, and fences, and winter-forage! But it was all just as it ought
to be; and if her father did not call him Will before long, she
herself would set the way by doing so first. A very paragon among
cousins!

"What a flatterer you are," she said to him that night.

"A flatterer! I?"

"Yes, you. You have flattered papa out of all his animosity already.
I shall be jealous soon; for he'll think more of you than of me."

"I hope he'll come to think of us as being nearly equally near to
him," said Belton, with a tone that was half serious and half tender.
Now that he had made up his mind, he could not keep his hand from the
work before him an instant. But Clara had also made up her mind, and
would not be made to think that her cousin could mean anything that
was more than cousinly.

"Upon my word," she said, laughing, "that is very cool on your part."

"I came here determined to be friends with him at any rate."

"And you did so without any thought of me. But you said you would be
my brother, and I shall not forget your promise. Indeed, indeed, I
cannot tell you how glad I am that you have come,--both for papa's
sake and my own. You have done him so much good that I only dread to
think that you are going so soon."

"I'll be back before long. I think nothing of running across here
from Norfolk. You'll see enough of me before next summer."

Soon after breakfast on the next morning he got Mr. Amedroz out into
the grounds, on the plea of showing him the proposed site for the
cattle shed; but not a word was said about the shed on that occasion.
He went to work at his other task at once, and when that was well on
hand the squire was quite unfitted for the consideration of any less
important matter, however able to discuss it Belton might have been
himself.

"I've got something particular that I want to say to you, sir,"
Belton began.

Now Mr. Amedroz was of opinion that his cousin had been saying
something very particular ever since his arrival, and was rather
frightened at this immediate prospect of a new subject.

"There's nothing wrong; is there?"

"No, nothing wrong;--at least, I hope it's not wrong. Would not it be
a good plan, sir, if I were to marry my cousin Clara?"

What a terrible young man! Mr. Amedroz felt that his breath was so
completely taken away from him that he was quite unable to speak a
word of answer at the moment. Indeed, he was unable to move, and
stood still, where he had been fixed by the cruel suddenness of the
proposition made to him.

"Of course I know nothing of what she may think about it," continued
Belton. "I thought it best to come to you before I spoke a word to
her. And I know that in many ways she is above me. She is better
educated, and reads more, and all that sort of thing. And it may be
that she'd rather marry a London man than a fellow who passes all
his time in the country. But she couldn't get one who would love her
better or treat her more kindly. And then as to the property; you
must own it would be a good arrangement. You'd like to know it would
go to your own child and your own grandchild;--wouldn't you, sir? And
I'm not badly off, without looking to this place at all, and could
give her everything she wants. But then I don't know that she'd care
to marry a farmer." These last words he said in a melancholy tone, as
though aware that he was confessing his own disgrace.

The squire had listened to it all, and had not as yet said a word.
And now, when Belton ceased, he did not know what word to speak. He
was a man whose thoughts about women were chivalrous, and perhaps a
little old-fashioned. Of course, when a man contemplates marriage,
he could do nothing better, nothing more honourable, than consult
the lady's father in the first instance. But he felt that even a
father should be addressed on such a subject with great delicacy.
There should be ambages in such a matter. The man who resolved to
commit himself to such a task should come forward with apparent
difficulty,--with great diffidence, and even with actual difficulty.
He should keep himself almost hidden, as behind a mask, and should
tell of his own ambition with doubtful, quivering voice. And the
ambages should take time. He should approach the citadel to be taken
with covered ways,--working his way slowly and painfully. But this
young man, before he had been in the house three days, said all
that he had to say without the slightest quaver in his voice, and
evidently expected to get an answer about the squire's daughter as
quickly as he had got it about the squire's land.

"You have surprised me very much," said the old man at last, drawing
his breath.

"I'm quite in earnest about it. Clara seems to me to be the very girl
to make a good wife to such a one as I am. She's got everything that
a woman ought to have;--by George she has!"

"She is a good girl, Mr. Belton."

"She is as good as gold, every inch of her."

"But you have not known her very long, Mr. Belton."

"Quite long enough for my purposes. You see I knew all about her
beforehand,--who she is, and where she comes from. There's a great
deal in that, you know."

Mr. Amedroz shuddered at the expressions used. It was grievous to
him to hear his daughter spoken of as one respecting whom some one
knew who she was and whence she came. Such knowledge respecting the
daughter of such a family was, as a matter of course, common to all
polite persons. "Yes," said Mr. Amedroz, stiffly: "you know as much
as that about her, certainly."

"And she knows as much about me. Now the question is, whether you
have any objection to make?"

"Really, Mr. Belton, you have taken me so much by surprise that I do
not feel myself competent to answer you at once."

"Shall we say in an hour's time, sir?" An hour's time! Mr. Amedroz,
if he could have been left to his own guidance, would have thought a
month very little for such a work.

"I suppose you would wish me to see Clara first," said Mr. Amedroz.

"Oh dear, no. I would much rather ask her myself;--if only I could
get your consent to my doing so."

"And you have said nothing to her?"

"Not a word."

"I am glad of that. You would have behaved badly, I think, had you
done so while staying under my roof."

"I thought it best, at any rate, to come to you first. But as I must
be back at Plaistow on this day week, I haven't much time to lose. So
if you could think about it this afternoon, you know--"

Mr. Amedroz, much bewildered, promised that he would do his best, and
eventually did bring himself to give an answer on the next morning.
"I have been thinking about this all night," said Mr. Amedroz.

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you," said Belton, feeling rather
ashamed of his own remissness as he remembered how soundly he had
himself slept.

"If you are quite sure of yourself--"

"Do you mean sure of loving her? I am as sure of that as anything."

"But men are so apt to change their fancies."

"I don't know much about my fancies; but I don't often change my
purpose when I'm in earnest. In such a matter as this I couldn't
change. I'll say as much as that for myself, though it may seem
bold."

"Of course, in regard to money such a marriage would be advantageous
to my child. I don't know whether you know it, but I shall have
nothing to give her--literally nothing."

"All the better, sir, as far as I am concerned. I'm not one who wants
to be saved from working by a wife's fortune."

"But most men like to get something when they marry."

"I want to get nothing;--nothing, that is, in the way of money. If
Clara becomes my wife I'll never ask you for one shilling."

"I hope her aunt will do something for her." This the old man said in
a wailing voice, as though the expression of such a hope was grievous
to him.

"If she becomes my wife, Mrs. Winterfield will be quite at liberty to
leave her money elsewhere." There were old causes of dislike between
Mr. Belton and Mrs. Winterfield, and even now Mrs. Winterfield was
almost offended because Mr. Belton was staying at Belton Castle.

"But all that is quite uncertain," continued Mr. Amedroz.

"And I have your leave to speak to Clara myself?"

"Well, Mr. Belton; yes; I think so. I do not see why you should not
speak to her. But I fear you are a little too precipitate. Clara has
known you so very short a time, that you can hardly have a right to
hope that she should learn to regard you at once as you would have
her do." As he heard this, Belton's face became long and melancholy.
He had taught himself to think that he could dispense with that delay
till Christmas which he had at first proposed to himself, and that he
might walk into the arena at once, and perhaps win the battle in the
first round. "Three days is such a very short time," said the squire.

"It is short certainly," said Belton.

The father's leave was however given, and armed with that, Belton was
resolved that he would take, at any rate, some preliminary steps in
love-making before he returned to Plaistow. What would be the nature
of the preliminary steps taken by such a one as him, the reader by
this time will probably be able to surmise.




CHAPTER V.

NOT SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING.


"Why don't you call him Will?" Clara said to her father. This
question was asked on the evening of that Monday on which Mr. Amedroz
had given his consent as to the marriage proposal.

"Call him Will! Why should I?"

"You used to do so, when he was a boy."

"Of course I did; but that is years ago. He would think it
impertinent now."

"Indeed he would not; he would like it. He has told me so. It sounds
so cold to him to be called Mr. Belton by his relations."

The father looked at his daughter as though for a moment he almost
suspected that matters had really been arranged between her and her
future lover without his concurrence, and before his sanction had
been obtained. But if for a moment such a thought did cross his mind,
it did not dwell there. He trusted Belton; but as to his daughter, he
knew that he might be sure of her. It would be impossible with her to
keep such a secret from him, even for half a day. And yet, how odd
it was! Here was a man who in three days had fallen in love with his
daughter; and here was his daughter apparently quite as ready to be
in love with the man. How could she, who was ordinarily circumspect,
and almost cold in her demeanour towards strangers--who was from
circumstances and from her own disposition altogether hostile to
flirting intimacies--how could his Clara have changed her nature
so speedily? The squire did not understand it, but was prepared to
believe that it was all for the best. "I'll call him Will, if you
like it," said he.

"Do, papa, and then I can do so also. He is such a good fellow, and
I am so fond of him."

On the next morning Mr. Amedroz did, with much awkwardness, call
his guest by his Christian name. Clara caught her cousin's eye and
smiled, and he also smiled. At that moment he was more in love than
ever. Could anything be more charming than this? Immediately after
breakfast he was going over to Redicote, to see a builder in a small
way who lived there, and whom he proposed to employ in putting up the
shed for the cattle; but he almost begrudged the time, so anxious was
he to begin his suit. But his plan had been laid out and he would
follow it. "I think I shall be back by three o'clock," he said to
Clara, "and then we'll have our walk."

"I'll be ready; and you can call for me at Mrs. Askerton's. I must go
down there, and it will save you something in your walk to pick me up
at the cottage." And so the arrangements for the day were made.

Clara had promised that she would soon call at the cottage, and was,
indeed, rather anxious to see Mrs. Askerton on her own account. What
she had heard from her cousin as to a certain Miss Vigo of old days
had interested her, and also what she had heard of a certain Mr.
Berdmore. It had been evident to her that her cousin had thought
little about it. The likeness of the lady he then saw to the lady he
had before known, had at first struck him; but when he found that the
two ladies were not represented by one and the same person, he was
satisfied, and there was an end of the matter for him. But it was
not so with Clara. Her feminine mind dwelt on the matter with more
earnestness than he had cared to entertain, and her clearer intellect
saw possibilities which did not occur to him. But it was not till
she found herself walking across the park to the cottage that
she remembered that any inquiries as to her past life might be
disagreeable to Mrs. Askerton. She had thought of asking her friend
plainly whether the names of Vigo and Berdmore had ever been familiar
to her; but she reminded herself that there had been rumours afloat,
and that there might be a mystery. Mrs. Askerton would sometimes talk
of her early life; but she would do this with dreamy, indistinct
language, speaking of the sorrows of her girlhood, but not specifying
their exact nature, seldom mentioning any names, and never referring
with clear personality to those who had been nearest to her when
she had been a child. Clara had seen her friend's maiden name, Mary
Oliphant, written in a book, and seeing it had alluded to it. On
that occasion Mrs. Askerton had spoken of herself as having been an
Oliphant, and thus Clara had come to know the fact. But now, as she
made her way to the cottage, she remembered that she had learned
nothing more than this as to Mrs. Askerton's early life. Such being
the case, she hardly knew how to ask any question about the two names
that had been mentioned. And yet, why should she not ask such a
question? Why should she doubt Mrs. Askerton? And if she did doubt,
why should not her doubts be solved?

She found Colonel Askerton and his wife together, and she certainly
would ask no such question in his presence. He was a slight built,
wiry man, about fifty, with iron-grey hair and beard,--who seemed to
have no trouble in life, and to desire but few pleasures. Nothing
could be more regular than the course of his days, and nothing more
idle. He breakfasted at eleven, smoked and read till the afternoon,
when he rode for an hour or two; then he dined, read again, smoked
again, and went to bed. In September and October he shot, and twice
in the year, as has been before stated, went away to seek a little
excitement elsewhere. He seemed to be quite contented with his lot,
and was never heard to speak an angry word to any one. Nobody cared
for him much; but then he troubled himself with no one's affairs. He
never went to church, and had not eaten or drank in any house but his
own since he had come to Belton.

"Oh, Clara, you naughty girl," said Mrs. Askerton, "why didn't you
come yesterday? I was expecting you all day."

"I was busy. Really, we've grown to be quite industrious people since
my cousin came."

"They tell me he's taking the land into his own hands," said the
Colonel.

"Yes, indeed; and he is going to build sheds, and buy cattle; and
I don't know what he doesn't mean to do; so that we shall be alive
again."

"I hope he won't want my shooting."

"He has shooting of his own in Norfolk," said Clara.

"Then he'll hardly care to come here for that purpose. When I heard
of his proceedings I began to be afraid."

"I don't think he would do anything to annoy you for the world," said
Clara, enthusiastically. "He's the most unselfish person I ever met."

"He'd have a perfect right to take the shooting if he liked it,--that
is always supposing that he and your father agreed about it."

"They agree about everything now. He has altogether disarmed papa's
prejudices, and it seems to be recognised that he is to have his own
way about the place. But I don't think he'll interfere about the
shooting."

"He won't, my dear, if you ask him not," said Mrs. Askerton.

"I'll ask him in a moment if Colonel Askerton wishes it."

"Oh dear no," said he. "It would be teaching the ostler to grease the
horse's teeth. Perhaps he hasn't thought of it."

"He thinks of everything," said Clara.

"I wonder whether he's thinking of--" So far Mrs. Askerton spoke,
and then she paused. Colonel Askerton looked up at Clara with an
ill-natured smile, and Clara felt that she blushed. Was it not cruel
that she could not say a word in favour of a friend and a cousin,--a
cousin who had promised to be a brother to her, without being treated
with such words and such looks as these? But she was determined not
to be put down. "I'm quite sure of this," she said, "that my cousin
would do nothing unfair or ungentlemanlike."

"There would be nothing unfair or ungentlemanlike in it. I shouldn't
take it amiss at all;--but I should simply take up my bed and walk.
Pray tell him that I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing him
before he goes. I did call yesterday, but he was out."

"He'll be here soon. He's to come here for me." But Colonel
Askerton's horse was brought to the door, and he could not therefore
wait to make Mr. Belton's acquaintance on that occasion.

"What a phoenix this cousin of yours is," said Mrs. Askerton, as
soon as her husband was gone.

"He is a splendid fellow;--he is indeed. There's so much life about
him! He's always doing something. He says that doing good will always
pay in the long run. Isn't that a fine doctrine?"

"Quite a practical phoenix!"

"It has done papa so much good! At this moment he's out somewhere,
thinking of what is going on, instead of moping in the house. He
couldn't bear the idea of Will's coming, and now he is already
beginning to complain because he's going away."

"Will, indeed!"

"And why not Will? He's my cousin."

"Yes;--ten times removed. But so much the better if he's to be
anything more than a cousin."

"He is to be nothing more, Mrs. Askerton."

"You're quite sure of that?"

"I am quite sure of it. And I cannot understand why there should be
such a suspicion because he and I are thrown closely together, and
are fond of each other. Whether he is a sixth, eighth, or tenth
cousin makes no difference. He is the nearest I have on that side;
and since my poor brother's death he is papa's heir. It is so natural
that he should be my friend;--and such a comfort that he should be
such a friend as he is! I own it seems cruel to me that under such
circumstances there should be any suspicion."

"Suspicion, my dear;--suspicion of what?"

"Not that I care for it. I am prepared to love him as if he
were my brother. I think him one of the finest creatures I ever
knew,--perhaps the finest I ever did know. His energy and good-nature
together are just the qualities to make the best kind of man. I am
proud of him as my friend and my cousin, and now you may suspect what
you please."

"But, my dear, why should not he fall in love with you? It would be
the most proper, and also the most convenient thing in the world."

"I hate talking of falling in love;--as though a woman has nothing
else to think of whenever she sees a man."

"A woman has nothing else to think of."

"I have,--a great deal else. And so has he."

"It's quite out of the question on his part, then?"

"Quite out of the question. I'm sure he likes me. I can see it in his
face, and hear it in his voice, and am so happy that it is so. But it
isn't in the way that you mean. Heaven knows that I may want a friend
some of these days, and I feel that I may trust to him. His feelings
to me will be always those of a brother."

"Perhaps so. I have seen that fraternal love before under similar
circumstances, and it has always ended in the same way."

"I hope it won't end in any way between us."

"But the joke is that this suspicion, as you call it,--which makes
you so indignant,--is simply a suggestion that a thing should happen
which, of all things in the world, would be the best for both of
you."

"But the thing won't happen, and therefore let there be an end of it.
I hate the twaddle talk of love, whether it's about myself or about
any one else. It makes me feel ashamed of my sex, when I find that
I cannot talk of myself to another woman without being supposed to
be either in love or thinking of love,--either looking for it or
avoiding it. When it comes, if it comes prosperously, it's a very
good thing. But I for one can do without it, and I feel myself
injured when such a state of things is presumed to be impossible."

"It is worth any one's while to irritate you, because your
indignation is so beautiful."

"It is not beautiful to me; for I always feel ashamed afterwards of
my own energy. And now, if you please, we won't say anything more
about Mr. Will Belton."

"May I not talk about him, even as the enterprising cousin?"

"Certainly; and in any other light you please. Do you know he seemed
to think that he had known you ever so many years ago." Clara, as
she said this, did not look direct at her friend's face; but still
she could perceive that Mrs. Askerton was disconcerted. There came a
shade of paleness over her face, and a look of trouble on her brow,
and for a moment or two she made no reply.

"Did he?" she then said. "And when was that?"

"I suppose it was in London. But, after all, I believe it was not
you, but somebody whom he remembers to have been like you. He says
that the lady was a Miss Vigo." As she pronounced the name, Clara
turned her face away, feeling instinctively that it would be kind to
do so.

"Miss Vigo!" said Mrs. Askerton at once; and there was that in the
tone of her voice which made Clara feel that all was not right with
her. "I remember that there were Miss Vigos; two of them, I think.
I didn't know that they were like me especially."

"And he says that the one he remembers married a Mr. Berdmore."

"Married a Mr. Berdmore!" The tone of voice was still the same, and
there was an evident struggle, as though the woman was making a
vehement effort to speak in her natural voice. Then Clara looked at
her, feeling that if she abstained from doing so, the very fact of
her so abstaining would be remarkable. There was the look of pain on
Mrs. Askerton's brow, and her cheeks were still pale, but she smiled
as she went on speaking. "I'm sure I'm flattered, for I remember that
they were both considered beauties. Did he know anything more of
her?"

"No; nothing more."

"There must have been some casual likeness I suppose." Mrs. Askerton
was a clever woman, and had by this time almost recovered her
self-possession. Then there came a ring at the front door, and in
another minute Mr. Belton was in the room. Mrs. Askerton felt that it
was imperative on her to make some allusion to the conversation which
had just taken place, and dashed at the subject at once. "Clara tells
me that I am exactly like some old friend of yours, Mr. Belton."

Then he looked at her closely as he answered her. "I have no right to
say that she was my friend, Mrs. Askerton," he said; "indeed there
was hardly what might be called an acquaintance between us; but you
certainly are extremely like a certain Miss Vigo that I remember."

"I often wonder that one person isn't more often found to be like
another," said Mrs. Askerton.

"People often are like," said he; "but not like in such a way as to
give rise to mistakes as to identity. Now, I should have stopped you
in the street and called you Mrs. Berdmore."

"Didn't I once see or hear the name of Berdmore in this house?" asked
Clara.

Then that look of pain returned. Mrs. Askerton had succeeded in
recovering the usual tone of her countenance, but now she was once
more disturbed. "I think I know the name," said she.

"I fancy that I have seen it in this house," said Clara.

"You may more likely have heard it, my dear. My memory is very poor,
but if I remember rightly, Colonel Askerton did know a Captain
Berdmore,--a long while ago, before he was married; and you may
probably have heard him mention the name." This did not quite satisfy
Clara, but she said nothing more about it then. If there was a
mystery which Mrs. Askerton did not wish to have explored, why should
she explore it?

Soon after this Clara got up to go, and Mrs. Askerton, making another
attempt to be cheerful, was almost successful. "So you're going back
into Norfolk on Saturday, Clara tells me. You are making a very short
visit now that you're come among us."

"It is a long time for me to be away from home. Farmers can hardly
ever dare to leave their work. But in spite of my farm, I am talking
of coming here again about Christmas."

"But you are going to have a farming establishment here too?"

"That will be nothing. Clara will look after that for me; will you
not?" Then they went, and Belton had to consider how he would begin
the work before him. He had some idea that too much precipitancy
might do him an injury, but he hardly knew how to commence without
coming to the point at once. When they were out together in the park,
he went back at first to the subject of Mrs. Askerton.

"I would almost have sworn they were one and the same woman," he
said.

"But you see that they are not."

"It's not only the likeness, but the voice. It so chanced that I once
saw that Miss Vigo in some trouble. I happened to meet her in company
with a man who was,--who was tipsy, in fact, and I had to relieve
her."

"Dear me,--how disagreeable!"

"It's a long time ago, and there can't be any harm in mentioning it
now. It was the man she was going to marry, and whom she did marry."

"What;--the Mr. Berdmore?"

"Yes; he was often in that way. And there was a look about Mrs.
Askerton just now so like the look of that Miss Vigo then, that I
cannot get rid of the idea."

"They can't be the same, as she was certainly a Miss Oliphant. And
you hear, too, what she says."

"Yes;--I heard what she said. You have known her long?"

"These two years."

"And intimately?"

"Very intimately. She is our only neighbour; and her being here has
certainly been a great comfort to me. It is sad not having some woman
near one that one can speak to;--and then, I really do like her very
much."

"No doubt it's all right."

"Yes; it's all right," said Clara. After that there was nothing more
said about Mrs. Askerton, and Belton began his work. They had gone
from the cottage, across the park, away from the house, up to a high
rock which stood boldly out of the ground, from whence could be seen
the sea on one side, and on the other a far tract of country almost
away to the moors. And when they reached this spot they seated
themselves. "There," said Clara, "I consider this to be the prettiest
spot in England."

"I haven't seen all England," said Belton.

"Don't be so matter-of-fact, Will. I say it's the prettiest in
England, and you can't contradict me."

"And I say you're the prettiest girl in England, and you can't
contradict me."

This annoyed Clara, and almost made her feel that her paragon of a
cousin was not quite so perfect as she had represented him to be. "I
see," she said, "that if I talk nonsense I'm to be punished."

"Is it a punishment to you to know that I think you very handsome?"
he said, turning round and looking full into her face.

"It is disagreeable to me--very, to have any such subject talked
about at all. What would you think if I began to pay you foolish
personal compliments?"

"What I say isn't foolish; and there's a great difference. Clara,
I love you better than all the world put together."

She now looked at him; but still she did not believe it. It could
not be that after all her boastings she should have made so gross a
blunder. "I hope you do love me," she said; "indeed, you are bound to
do so, for you promised that you would be my brother."

"But that will not satisfy me now, Clara. Clara, I want to be your
husband."

"Will!" she exclaimed.

"Now you know it all; and if I have been too sudden, I must beg your
pardon."

"Oh, Will, forget that you have said this. Do not go on until
everything must be over between us."

"Why should anything be over between us? Why should it be wrong in me
to love you?"

"What will papa say?"

"Mr. Amedroz knows all about it already, and has given me his
consent. I asked him directly I had made up my own mind, and he told
me that I might go to you."

"You have asked papa? Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?"

"Am I so odious to you then?" As he said this he got up from his seat
and stood before her. He was a tall, well-built, handsome man, and he
could assume a look and mien that were almost noble when he was moved
as he was moved now.

"Odious! Do you not know that I have loved you as my cousin--that
I have already learned to trust you as though you were really my
brother? But this breaks it all."

"You cannot love me then as my wife?"

"No." She pronounced the monosyllable alone, and then he walked away
from her as though that one little word settled the question for him,
now and for ever. He walked away from her, perhaps a distance of two
hundred yards, as though the interview was over, and he were leaving
her. She, as she saw him go, wished that he would return that she
might say some word of comfort to him. Not that she could have said
the only word that would have comforted him. At the first blush of
the thing, at the first sound of the address which he had made to
her, she had been angry with him. He had disappointed her, and she
was indignant. But her anger had already melted and turned itself to
ruth. She could not but love him better, in that he had loved her so
well; but yet she could not love him with the love which he desired.

But he did not leave her. When he had gone from her down the hill
the distance that has been named, he turned back, and came up to her
slowly. He had a trick of standing and walking with his thumbs fixed
into the armholes of his waistcoat, while his large hands rested on
his breast. He would always assume this attitude when he was assured
that he was right in his views, and was eager to carry some point
at issue. Clara already understood that this attitude signified his
intention to be autocratic. He now came close up to her, and again
stood over her, before he spoke. "My dear," he said, "I have been
rough and hasty in what I have said to you, and I have to ask you to
pardon my want of manners."

"No, no, no," she exclaimed.

"But in a matter of so much interest to us both you will not let an
awkward manner prejudice me."

"It is not that; indeed, it is not."

"Listen to me, dearest. It is true that I promised to be your
brother, and I will not break my word unless I break it by your own
sanction. I did promise to be your brother, but I did not know then
how fondly I should come to love you. Your father, when I told him of
this, bade me not to be hasty; but I am hasty, and I haven't known
how to wait. Tell me that I may come at Christmas for my answer,
and I will not say a word to trouble you till then. I will be your
brother, at any rate till Christmas."

"Be my brother always."

A black cloud crossed his brow as this request reached his ears.
She was looking anxiously into his face, watching every turn in
the expression of his countenance. "Will you not let it wait till
Christmas?" he asked.

She thought it would be cruel to refuse this request, and yet she
knew that no such waiting could be of service to him. He had been
awkward in his love-making, and was aware of it. He should have
contrived this period of waiting for himself; giving her no option
but to wait and think of it. He should have made no proposal, but
have left her certain that such proposal was coming. In such case she
must have waited--and if good could have come to him from that, he
might have received it. But, as the question was now presented to
her, it was impossible that she should consent to wait. To have given
such consent would have been tantamount to receiving him as her
lover. She was therefore forced to be cruel.

"It will be of no avail to postpone my answer when I know what it
must be. Why should there be suspense?"

"You mean that it is impossible that you should love me?"

"Not in that way, Will."

"And why not?" Then there was a pause. "But I am a fool to ask such a
question as that, and I should be worse than a fool were I to press
it. It must then be considered as settled?"

She got up and clung to his arm. "Oh, Will, do not look at me like
that!"

"It must then be considered as settled?" he repeated.

"Yes, Will, yes. Pray consider it as settled." He then sat down on
the rock again, and she came and sat by him,--near to him, but not
close as she had been before. She turned her eyes upon him, gazing on
him, but did not speak to him; and he sat also without speaking for a
while, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. "I suppose we may go back
to the house?" he said at last.

"Give me your hand, Will, and tell me that you will still love me--as
your sister."

He gave her his hand. "If you ever want a brother's care you shall
have it from me," he said.

"But not a brother's love?"

"No. How can the two go together? I shan't cease to love you because
my love is in vain. Instead of making me happy it will make me
wretched. That will be the only difference."

"I would give my life to make you happy, if that were possible."

"You will not give me your life in the way that I would have it."
After that they walked in silence back to the house, and when he had
opened the front door for her, he parted from her and stood alone
under the porch, thinking of his misfortune.




CHAPTER VI.

SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING ONCE AGAIN.


For a considerable time Belton stood under the porch of the house,
thinking of what had happened to him, and endeavouring to steady
himself under the blow which he had received. I do not know that he
had been sanguine of success. Probably he had made to himself no
assurances on the subject. But he was a man to whom failure, of
itself, was intolerable. In any other event of life he would have
told himself that he would not fail--that he would persevere and
conquer. He could imagine no other position as to which he could at
once have been assured of failure, in any project on which he had set
his heart. But as to this project it was so. He had been told that
she could not love him--that she could never love him;--and he had
believed her. He had made his attempt and had failed; and, as he
thought of this, standing under the porch, he became convinced that
life for him was altogether changed, and that he who had been so
happy must now be a wretched man.

He was still standing there when Mr. Amedroz came down into the
hall, dressed for dinner, and saw his figure through the open doors.
"Will," he said, coming up to him, "it only wants five minutes to
dinner." Belton started and shook himself, as though he were shaking
off a lethargy, and declared that he was quite ready. Then he
remembered that he would be expected to dress, and rushed up-stairs,
three steps at a time, to his own room. When he came down, Clara and
her father were already in the dining-room, and he joined them there.

Mr. Amedroz, though he was not very quick in reading facts from the
manners of those with whom he lived, had felt assured that things had
gone wrong between Belton and his daughter. He had not as yet had a
minute in which to speak to Clara, but he was certain that it was so.
Indeed, it was impossible not to read terrible disappointment and
deep grief in the young man's manner. He made no attempt to conceal
it, though he did not speak of it. Through the whole evening, though
he was alone for a while with the squire, and alone also for a time
with Clara, he never mentioned or alluded to the subject of his
rejection. But he bore himself as though he knew and they knew--as
though all the world knew that he had been rejected. And yet he did
not remain silent. He talked of his property and of his plans, and
explained how things were to be done in his absence. Once only was
there something like an allusion made to his sorrow. "But you will be
here at Christmas?" said Mr. Amedroz, in answer to something which
Belton had said as to work to be done in his absence. "I do not know
how that may be now," said Belton. And then they had all been silent.

It was a terrible evening to Clara. She endeavoured to talk, but
found it to be impossible. All the brightness of the last few days
had disappeared, and the world seemed to her to be more sad and
solemn than ever. She had no idea when she was refusing him that he
would have taken it to heart as he had done. The question had come
before her for decision so suddenly, that she had not, in fact, had
time to think of this as she was making her answer. All she had done
was to feel that she could not be to him what he wished her to be.
And even as yet she had hardly asked herself why she must be so
steadfast in her refusal. But she had refused him steadfastly, and
she did not for a moment think of reducing the earnestness of her
resolution. It seemed to be manifest to her, from his present manner,
that he would never ask the question again; but she was sure, let it
be asked ever so often, that it could not be answered in any other
way.

Mr. Amedroz, not knowing why it was so, became cross and querulous,
and scolded his daughter. To Belton, also, he was captious, making
little difficulties, and answering him with petulance. This the
rejected lover took with most extreme patience, as though such a
trifling annoyance had no effect in adding anything to his misery. He
still held his purpose of going on the Saturday, and was still intent
on work which was to be done before he went; but it seemed that he
was satisfied to do everything now as a duty, and that the enjoyment
of the thing, which had heretofore been so conspicuous, was over.

At last they separated, and Clara, as was her wont, went up to her
father's room. "Papa," she said, "what is all this about Mr. Belton?"

"All what, my dear? what do you mean?"

"He has asked me to be,--to be his wife; and has told me that he came
with your consent."

"And why shouldn't he have my consent? What is there amiss with him?
Why shouldn't you marry him if he likes you? You seemed, I thought,
to be very fond of him."

This surprised Clara more than anything. She could hardly have told
herself why, but she would have thought that such a proposition
from her cousin would have made her father angry,--unreasonably
angry;--angry with him for presuming to have such an idea; but now it
seemed that he was going to be angry with her for not accepting her
cousin out of hand.

"Yes, papa; I am fond of him; but not like that. I did not expect
that he would think of me in that way."

"But why shouldn't he think of you? It would be a very good marriage
for you, as far as money is concerned."

"You would not have me marry any one for that reason;--would you,
papa?"

"But you seemed to like him. Well; of course I can't make you like
him. I meant to do for the best; and when he came to me as he did,
I thought he was behaving very handsomely, and very much like a
gentleman."

"I am sure he would do that."

"And if I could have thought that this place would be your home when
I am gone, it would have made me very happy;--very happy."

She now came and stood close to him and took his hand. "I hope, papa,
you do not make yourself uneasy about me. I shall do very well. I'm
sure you can't want me to go away and leave you."

"How will you do very well? I'm sure I don't know. And if your aunt
Winterfield means to provide for you, it would only be kind in her
to let me know it, so that I might not have the anxiety always on my
mind."

Clara knew well enough what was to be the disposition of her aunt's
property, but she could not tell her father of that now. She almost
felt that it was her duty to do so, but she could not bring herself
to do it. She could only beg him not to be anxious on her behalf,
making vague assurances that she would do very well. "And you are
determined not to change your mind about Will?" he said at last.

"I shall not change my mind about that, papa, certainly," she
answered. Then he turned away from her, and she saw that he was
displeased.

When alone, she was forced to ask herself why it was that she was so
certain. Alas! there could in truth be no doubt on that subject in
her own mind. 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. She had replied that such a thing was
impossible,--as any girl would have replied; and had in consequence
treated Captain Aylmer with all the coolness which she had been
able to assume whenever she was in company with him in her aunt's
presence. Nor was it natural to her to be specially gracious to a man
under such trying circumstances, even when no Mrs. Winterfield was
there to behold. And so things had gone on. Captain Aylmer had now
and again made himself very pleasant to her,--at certain trying
periods of joy or trouble almost more than pleasant. But nothing had
come of it, and Clara had told herself that Captain Aylmer had no
special feeling in her favour. She had told herself this, ever since
that journey together from Perivale to Taunton; but never till now
had she also confessed to herself what was her own case.

She made a comparison between the two men. Her cousin Will was, she
thought, the more generous, the more energetic,--perhaps, by nature,
the man of the higher gifts. In person he was undoubtedly the
superior. He was full of noble qualities;--forgetful of self,
industrious, full of resources, a very man of men, able to command,
eager in doing work for others' good and his own,--a man altogether
uncontaminated by the coldness and selfishness of the outer world.
But he was rough, awkward, but indifferently educated, and with few
of those tastes which to Clara Amedroz were delightful. He could
not read poetry to her, he could not tell her of what the world of
literature was doing now or of what it had done in times past. He
knew nothing of the inner world of worlds which governs the world.
She doubted whether he could have told her who composed the existing
cabinet, or have given the name of a single bishop beyond the see in
which his own parish was situated. But Captain Aylmer knew everybody,
and had read everything, and understood, as though by instinct, all
the movements of the world in which he lived.

But what mattered any such comparison? Even though she should be able
to prove to herself beyond the shadow of a doubt that her cousin Will
was of the two the fitter to be loved,--the one more worthy of her
heart,--no such proof could alter her position. Love does not go by
worth. She did not love her cousin as she must love any man to whom
she could give her hand,--and, alas! she did love that other man.

On this night I doubt whether Belton did slumber with that solidity
of repose which was usual to him. At any rate, before he came down in
the morning he had found time for sufficient thought, and had brought
himself to a resolution. He would not give up the battle as lost. To
his thinking there was something weak and almost mean in abandoning
any project which he had set before himself. He had been awkward, and
he exaggerated to himself his own awkwardness. He had been hasty, and
had gone about his task with inconsiderate precipitancy. It might be
that he had thus destroyed all his chance of success. But, as he said
to himself, "he would never say die, as long as there was a puff of
breath left to him." He would not mope, and hang down his head, and
wear the willow. Such a state of things would ill suit either the
roughness or the readiness of his life. No! He would bear like a man
the disappointment which had on this occasion befallen him, and would
return at Christmas and once more try his fortune.

At breakfast, therefore, the cloud had passed from his brow. When he
came in he found Clara alone in the room, and he simply shook hands
with her after his ordinary fashion. He said nothing of yesterday,
and almost succeeded in looking as though yesterday had been in
no wise memorable. She was not so much at her ease, but she also
received some comfort from his demeanour. Mr. Amedroz came down
almost immediately, and Belton soon took an opportunity of saying
that he would be back at Christmas if Mr. Amedroz would receive him.

"Certainly," said the squire. "I thought it had been all settled."

"So it was;--till I said a word yesterday which foolishly seemed to
unsettle it. But I have thought it over again, and I find that I can
manage it."

"We shall be so glad to have you!" said Clara.

"And I shall be equally glad to come. They are already at work, sir,
about the sheds."

"Yes; I saw the carts full of bricks go by," said the squire,
querulously. "I didn't know there was to be any brickwork. You said
you would have it made of deal slabs with oak posts."

"You must have a foundation, sir. I propose to carry the brickwork a
foot and a half above the ground."

"I suppose you know best. Only that kind of thing is so very ugly."

"If you find it to be ugly after it is done, it shall be pulled down
again."

"No;--it can never come down again."

"It can;--and it shall, if you don't like it. I never think anything
of changes like that."

"I think they'll be very pretty!" said Clara.

"I dare say," said the squire; "but at any rate it won't make much
difference to me. I shan't be here long to see them."

This was rather melancholy; but Belton bore up even against this,
speaking cheery words and expressing bright hopes,--so that it
seemed, both to Clara and to her father, that he had in a great
measure overcome the disappointment of the preceding day. It was
probable that he was a man not prone to be deeply sensitive in such
matters for any long period. The period now had certainly not been
long, and yet Will Belton was alive again.

Immediately after breakfast there occurred a little incident which
was not without its effect upon them all. There came up on the drive,
immediately before the front door, under the custody of a boy, a cow.
It was an Alderney cow, and any man or woman at all understanding
cows, would at once have perceived that this cow was perfect in her
kind. Her eyes were mild, and soft, and bright. Her legs were like
the legs of a deer; and in her whole gait and demeanour she almost
gave the lie to her own name, asserting herself to have sprung from
some more noble origin among the woods, than may be supposed to
be the origin of the ordinary domestic cow,--a useful animal, but
heavy in its appearance, and seen with more pleasure at some little
distance than at close quarters. But this cow was graceful in its
movements, and almost tempted one to regard her as the far-off
descendant of the elk or the antelope.

"What's that?" said Mr. Amedroz, who, having no cows of his own, was
not pleased to see one brought up in that way before his hall door.
"There's somebody's cow come here."

Clara understood it in a moment; but she was pained, and said
nothing. Had the cow come without any such scene as that of
yesterday, she would have welcomed the animal with all cordiality,
and would have sworn to her cousin that the cow should be cherished
for his sake. But after what had passed it was different. How was she
to take any present from him now?

But Belton faced the difficulty without any bashfulness or apparent
regret. "I told you I would give you a cow," said he, "and here she
is."

"What can she want with a cow?" said Mr. Amedroz.

"I am sure she wants one very much. At any rate she won't refuse the
present from me; will you, Clara?"

What could she say? "Not if papa will allow me to keep it."

"But we've no place to put it!" said the squire. "We haven't got
grass for it!"

"There's plenty of grass," said Belton. "Come, Mr. Amedroz; I've made
a point of getting this little creature for Clara, and you mustn't
stand in the way of my gratification." Of course he was successful,
and of course Clara thanked him with tears in her eyes.

The next two days passed by without anything special to mark them,
and then the cousin was to go. During the period of his visit he did
not see Colonel Askerton, nor did he again see Mrs. Askerton. He
went to the cottage once, with the special object of returning the
Colonel's call; but the master was out, and he was not specially
invited in to see the mistress. He said nothing more to Clara about
her friends, but he thought of the matter more than once, as he
was going about the place, and became aware that he would like to
ascertain whether there was a mystery, and if so, what was its
nature. He knew that he did not like Mrs. Askerton, and he felt
also that Mrs. Askerton did not like him. This was, as he thought,
unfortunate; for might it not be the case, that in the one matter
which was to him of so much importance, Mrs. Askerton might have
considerable influence over Clara?

During these days nothing special was said between him and Clara. The
last evening passed over without anything to brighten it or to make
it memorable. Mr. Amedroz, in his passive, but gently querulous way,
was sorry that Belton was going to leave him, as his cousin had been
the creation of some new excitement for him, but he said nothing on
the subject; and when the time for going to bed had come, he bade his
guest farewell with some languid allusion to the pleasure which he
would have in seeing him again at Christmas. Belton was to start very
early in the morning,--before six, and of course he was prepared to
take leave also of Clara. But she told him very gently, so gently
that her father did not hear it, that she would be up to give him a
cup of coffee before he went.

"Oh no," he said.

"But I shall. I won't have you go without seeing you out of the
door."

And on the following morning she was up before him. She hardly
understood, herself, why she was doing this. She knew that it should
be her object to avoid any further special conversation on that
subject which they had discussed up among the rocks. She knew that
she could give him no comfort, and that he could give none to her. It
would seem that he was willing to let the remembrance of the scene
pass away, so that it should be as though it had never been; and
surely it was not for her to disturb so salutary an arrangement!
But yet she was up to bid him Godspeed as he went. She could not
bear,--so she excused the matter to herself,--she could not bear to
think that he should regard her as ungrateful. She knew all that he
had done for them. She had perceived that the taking of the land, the
building of the sheds, the life which he had contrived in so short a
time to throw into the old place, had all come from a desire on his
part to do good to those in whose way he stood by family arrangements
made almost before his birth; and she longed to say to him one
word of thanks. And had he not told her,--once in the heat of
his disappointment; for then at that moment, as Clara said to
herself, she supposed that he must have been in some measure
disappointed,--had he not even then told her that when she wanted
a brother's care, a brother's care should be given to her by him?
Was she not therefore bound to do for him what she would do for a
brother?

She, with her own hands, brought the coffee into the little breakfast
parlour, and handed the cup into his hands. The gig, which had come
overnight from Taunton, was not yet at the door, and there was a
minute or two during which they must speak to each other. Who has not
seen some such girl when she has come down early, without the full
completeness of her morning toilet, and yet nicer, fresher, prettier
to the eye of him who is so favoured, than she has ever been in more
formal attire? And what man who has been so favoured has not loved
her who has so favoured him, even though he may not previously have
been enamoured as deeply as poor Will Belton?

"This is so good of you," he said.

"I wish I knew how to be good to you," she answered,--not meaning to
trench upon dangerous ground, but feeling, as the words came from
her, that she had done so. "You have been so good to us, so very good
to papa, that we owe you everything. I am so grateful to you for
saying that you will come back at Christmas."

He had resolved that he would refrain from further love-making till
the winter; but he found it very hard to refrain when so addressed.
To take her in his arms, and kiss her twenty times, and swear that he
would never let her go,--to claim her at once savagely as his own,
that was the line of conduct to which temptation prompted him. How
could she look at him so sweetly, how could she stand before him,
ministering to him with all her pretty maidenly charms brought so
close to him, without intending that he should love her? But he did
refrain. "Blood is thicker than water," said he. "That's the real
reason why I first came."

"I understand that quite, and it is that feeling that makes you so
good. But I'm afraid you are spending a great deal of money here--and
all for our sakes."

"Not at all. I shall get my money back again. And if I didn't, what
then? I've plenty of money. It is not money that I want."

She could not ask him what it was that he did want, and she was
obliged therefore to begin again. "Papa will look forward so to the
winter now."

"And so shall I."

"But you must come for longer then;--you won't go away at the end of
a week? Say that you won't."

"I'll see about it. I can't tell quite yet. You'll write me a line to
say when the shed is finished, won't you?"

"That I will, and I'll tell you how Bessy goes on." Bessy was the
cow. "I will be so very fond of her. She'll come to me for apples
already."

Belton thought that he would go to her, wherever she might be, even
if he were to get no apples. "It's all cupboard love with them," he
said. "I'll tell you what I'll do;--when I come, I'll bring you a dog
that will follow you without thinking of apples." Then the gig was
heard on the gravel before the door, and Belton was forced to go. For
a moment he reflected whether, as her cousin, it was not his duty to
kiss her. It was a matter as to which he had doubt,--as is the case
with many male cousins; but ultimately he resolved that if he kissed
her at all he would not kiss her in that light, and so he again
refrained. "Good-bye," he said, putting out his great hand to her.

"Good-bye, Will, and God bless you." I almost think he might have
kissed her, asking himself no questions as to the light in which it
was done.

As he turned from her he saw the tears in her eyes; and as he sat in
the gig, thinking of them, other tears came into his own. By heaven,
he would have her yet! He was a man who had not read much of romance.
To him all the imagined mysteries of passion had not been made common
by the perusal of legions of love stories;--but still he knew enough
of the game to be aware that women had been won in spite, as it were,
of their own teeth. He knew that he could not now run away with her,
taking her off by force; but still he might conquer her will by his
own. As he remembered the tears in her eyes, and the tone of her
voice, and the pressure of her hand, and the gratitude that had
become tender in its expression, he could not but think that he would
be wise to love her still. Wise or foolish, he did love her still;
and it should not be owing to fault of his if she did not become his
wife. As he drove along he saw little of the Quantock hills, little
of the rich Somersetshire pastures, little of the early beauty of the
August morning. He saw nothing but her eyes, moistened with bright
tears, and before he reached Taunton he had rebuked himself with many
revilings in that he had parted from her and not kissed her.

Clara stood at the door watching the gig till it was out of
sight,--watching it as well as her tears would allow. What a grand
cousin he was! Had it not been a pity,--a thousand pities,--that
that grievous episode should have come to mar the brotherly love,
the sisterly confidence, which might otherwise have been so perfect
between them? But perhaps it might all be well yet. Clara knew,
or thought that she knew, that men and women differed in their
appreciation of love. She, having once loved, could not change. Of
that she was sure. Her love might be fortunate or unfortunate. It
might be returned, or it might simply be her own, to destroy all
hope of happiness for her on earth. But whether it were this or that,
whether productive of good or evil, the love itself could not be
changed. But with men she thought it might be different. Her cousin,
doubtless, had been sincere in the full sincerity of his heart when
he made his offer. And had she accepted it,--had she been able to
accept it,--she believed that he would have loved her truly and
constantly. Such was his nature. But she also believed that love with
him, unrequited love, would have no enduring effect, and that he
had already resolved, with equal courage and wisdom, to tread this
short-lived passion out beneath his feet. One night had sufficed
to him for that treading out. As she thought of this the tears ran
plentifully down her cheek; and going again to her room she remained
there crying till it was time for her to wipe away the marks of her
weeping, that she might go to her father.

But she was very glad that Will bore it so well;--very glad! Her
cousin was safe against love-making once again.




CHAPTER VII.

MISS AMEDROZ GOES TO PERIVALE.


It had been settled for some time past that Miss Amedroz was to go
to Perivale for a few days in November. Indeed it seemed to be a
recognised fact in her life that she was to make the journey from
Belton to Perivale and back very often, as there prevailed an idea
that she owed a divided duty. This was in some degree hard upon her,
as she had very little gratification in these visits to her aunt. Had
there been any intention on the part of Mrs. Winterfield to provide
for her, the thing would have been intelligible according to the
usual arrangements which are made in the world on such matters; but
Mrs. Winterfield had scarcely a right to call upon her niece for
dutiful attendance after having settled it with her own conscience
that her property was all to go to her nephew. But Clara entertained
no thought of rebelling, and had agreed to make the accustomed
journey in November, travelling then, as she did on all such
journeys, at her aunt's expense.

Two things only occurred to disturb her tranquillity before she went,
and they were not of much violence. Mr. Wright, the clergyman, called
at Belton Castle, and in the course of conversation with Mr. Amedroz
renewed one of those ill-natured rumours which had before been spread
about Mrs. Askerton. Clara did not see him, but she heard an account
of it all from her father.

"Does it mean, papa," she said, speaking almost with anger, "that you
want me to give up Mrs. Askerton?"

"How can you be so unkind as to ask me such a question?" he replied.
"You know how I hate to be bothered. I tell you what I hear, and then
you can decide for yourself."

"But that isn't quite fair either, papa. That man comes here--"

"That man, as you call him, is the rector of the parish, and I've
known him for forty years."

"And have never liked him, papa."

"I don't know much about liking anybody, my dear. Nobody likes me,
and so why should I trouble myself?"

"But, papa, it all amounts to this--that somebody has said that the
Askertons are not Askertons at all, but ought to be called something
else. Now we know that he served as Captain and Major Askerton for
seven years in India--and in fact it all means nothing. If I know
anything, I know that he is Colonel Askerton."

"But do you know that she is his wife? That is what Mr. Wright asks.
I don't say anything. I think it's very indelicate talking about such
things."

"If I am asked whether I have seen her marriage certificate,
certainly I have not; nor probably did you ever do so as to any lady
that you ever knew. But I know that she is her husband's wife, as we
all of us know things of that sort. I know she was in India with him.
I've seen things of hers marked with her name that she has had at
least for ten years."

"I don't know anything about it, my dear," said Mr. Amedroz, angrily.

"But Mr. Wright ought to know something about it before he says such
things. And then this that he's saying now isn't the same that he
said before."

"I don't know what he said before."

"He said they were both of them using a feigned name."

"It's nothing to me what name they use. I know I wish they hadn't
come here, if I'm to be troubled about them in this way--first by
Wright and then by you."

"They have been very good tenants, papa."

"You needn't tell me that, Clara, and remind me about the shooting
when you know how unhappy it makes me."

After this Clara said nothing more, and simply determined that Mr.
Wright and his gossip should have no effect upon her intimacy with
Mrs. Askerton. But not the less did she continue to remember what her
cousin had said about Miss Vigo.

And she had been ruffled a second time by certain observations which
Mrs. Askerton made to her respecting her cousin--or rather by little
words which were dropped on various occasions. It was very clear
that Mrs. Askerton did not like Mr. Belton, and that she wished to
prejudice Clara against him. "It's a pity he shouldn't be a lover
of yours," the lady said, "because it would be such a fine instance
of Beauty and the Beast." It will of course be understood that Mrs.
Askerton had never been told of the offer that had been made.

"You don't mean to say that he's not a handsome man," said Clara.

"I never observe whether a man is handsome or not; but I can see very
well whether he knows what to do with his arms and legs, or whether
he has the proper use of his voice before ladies." Clara remembered a
word or two spoken by her cousin to herself, in speaking which he had
seemed to have a very proper use of his voice. "I know when a man is
at ease like a gentleman, and when he is awkward like a--"

"Like a what?" said Clara. "Finish what you've got to say."

"Like a ploughboy, I was going to say," said Mrs. Askerton.

"I declare I think you have a spite against him, because he said you
were like some Miss Vigo," replied Clara, sharply. Mrs. Askerton was
on that occasion silenced, and she said nothing more about Mr. Belton
till after Clara had returned from Perivale.

The journey itself from Belton to Perivale was always a nuisance, and
was more so now than usual, as it was made in the disagreeable month
of November. There was kept at the little inn at Redicote an old
fly--so called--which habitually made the journey to the Taunton
railway-station, under the conduct of an old grey horse and an
older and greyer driver, whenever any of the old ladies of the
neighbourhood were minded to leave their homes. This vehicle usually
travelled at the rate of five miles an hour; but the old grey driver
was never content to have time allowed to him for the transit
calculated upon such a rate of speed. Accidents might happen, and why
should he be made, as he would plaintively ask, to drive the poor
beast out of its skin? He was consequently always at Belton a full
hour before the time, and though Clara was well aware of all this,
she could not help herself. Her father was fussy and impatient, the
man was fussy and impatient; and there was nothing for her but to go.
On the present occasion she was taken off in this way the full sixty
minutes too soon, and after four dreary hours spent upon the road,
found herself landed at the Taunton station, with a terrible gulf of
time to be passed before she could again proceed on her journey.

One little accident had occurred to her. The old horse, while
trotting leisurely along the level high road, had contrived to tumble
down. Clara did not think very much of this, as the same thing had
happened with her before; but, even with an hour or more to spare,
there arises a question whether under such circumstances the train
can be saved. But the grey old man reassured her. "Now, miss," said
he, coming to the window, while he left his horse recumbent and
apparently comfortable on the road, "where'd you have been now, zure,
if I hadn't a few minutes in hand for you?" Then he walked off to
some neighbouring cottage, and having obtained assistance, succeeded
in putting his beast again upon his legs. After that he looked once
more in at the window. "Who's right now, I wonder?" he said, with an
air of triumph. And when he came to her for his guerdon at Taunton,
he was evidently cross in not having it increased because of the
accident.

That hour at the Taunton station was terrible to her. I know of no
hours more terrible than those so passed. The minutes will not go
away, and utterly fail in making good their claim to be called
winged. A man walks up and down the platform, and in that way obtains
something of the advantage of exercise; but a woman finds herself
bound to sit still within the dreary dulness of the waiting-room.
There are, perhaps, people who under such circumstances can read, but
they are few in number. The mind altogether declines to be active,
whereas the body is seized by a spirit of restlessness to which delay
and tranquillity are loathsome. The advertisements on the walls are
examined, the map of some new Eden is studied--some Eden in which
an irregular pond and a church are surrounded by a multiplicity
of regular villas and shrubs--till the student feels that no
consideration of health or economy would induce him to live there.
Then the porters come in and out, till each porter has made himself
odious to the sight. Everything is hideous, dirty, and disagreeable;
and the mind wanders away, to consider why station-masters do not
more frequently commit suicide. Clara Amedroz had already got beyond
this stage, and was beginning to think of herself rather than of the
station-master, when at last there sounded, close to her ears, the
bell of promise, and she knew that the train was at hand.

At Taunton there branched away from the main line that line which
was to take her to Perivale, and therefore she was able to take her
own place quietly in the carriage when she found that the down-train
from London was at hand. This she did, and could then watch with
equanimity, while the travellers from the other train went through
the penance of changing their seats. But she had not been so watching
for many seconds when she saw Captain Frederic Aylmer appear upon the
platform. Immediately she sank back into her corner and watched no
more. Of course he was going to Perivale; but why had not her aunt
told her that she was to meet him? Of course she would be staying in
the same house with him, and her present small attempt to avoid him
would thus be futile. The attempt was made; but nevertheless she was
probably pleased when she found that it was made in vain. He came at
once to the carriage in which she was sitting, and had packed his
coats, and dressing-bag, and desk about the carriage before he had
discovered who was his fellow-traveller. "How do you do, Captain
Aylmer?" she said, as he was about to take his seat.

"Miss Amedroz! Dear me; how very odd! I had not the slightest
expectation of meeting you here. The pleasure is of course the
greater."

"Nor I of seeing you. Mrs. Winterfield has not mentioned to me that
you were coming to Perivale."

"I didn't know it myself till the day before yesterday. I'm going to
give an account of my stewardship to the good-natured Perivalians who
send me to Parliament. I'm to dine with the mayor to-morrow, and as
some big-wig has come in his way who is going to dine with him also,
the thing has been got up in a hurry. But I'm delighted to find that
you are to be with us."

"I generally go to my aunt about this time of the year."

"It is very good-natured of you." Then he asked after her father,
and she told him of Mr. Belton's visit, telling him nothing--as the
reader will hardly require to be told--of Mr. Belton's offer. And so,
by degrees, they fell into close and intimate conversation.

"I am so glad, for your father's sake!" said the captain, with
sympathetic voice, speaking still of Mr. Belton's visit.

"That's what I feel, of course."

"It is just as it should be, as he stands in that position to the
property. And so he is a nice sort of fellow, is he?"

"Nice is no word for him. He is perfect!"

"Dear me! This is terrible! You remember that they hated some old
Greek patriot when they could find no fault in him?"

"I'll defy you to hate my cousin Will."

"What sort of looking man is he?"

"Extremely handsome;--at least I should say so."

"Then I certainly must hate him. And clever?"

"Well;--not what you would call clever. He is very clever about
fields and cattle."

"Come, there is some relief in that."

"But you must not mistake me. He is clever; and then there's a
way about him of doing everything just as he likes it, which is
wonderful. You feel quite sure that he'll become master of
everything."

"But I do not feel at all sure that I should like him the better for
that!"

"But he doesn't meddle in things that he doesn't understand. And then
he is so generous! His spending all that money down there is only
done because he thinks it will make the place pleasanter to papa."

"Has he got plenty of money?"

"Oh, plenty! At least, I think so. He says that he has."

"The idea of any man owning that he had got plenty of money! What
a happy mortal! And then to be handsome, and omnipotent, and to
understand cattle and fields! One would strive to emulate him rather
than envy him, had not one learned to acknowledge that it is not
given to every one to get to Corinth."

"You may laugh at him, but you'd like him if you knew him."

"One never can be sure of that from a lady's account of a man. When
a man talks to me about another man, I can generally tell whether I
should like him or not--particularly if I know the man well who is
giving the description; but it is quite different when a woman is the
describer."

"You mean that you won't take my word?"

"We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your
cousin is a worthy man--and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane
of Cawdor in his prosperous days;--but probably if he and I came
together we shouldn't have a word to say to each other."

Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she
knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were
they two to meet in her presence,--the captain and the farmer,--she
felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the
better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the
two, though she knew also that she could not love him as she loved
the other.

Then they changed the subject of their conversation, and discussed
Mrs. Winterfield, as they had often done before. Captain Aylmer had
said that he should return to London on the Saturday, the present day
being Tuesday, and Clara accused him of escaping always from the real
hard work of his position. "I observe that you never stay a Sunday at
Perivale," she said.

"Well;--not often. Why should I? Sunday is just the day that people
like to be at home."

"I should have thought it would not have made much difference to a
bachelor in that way."

"But Sunday is a day that one specially likes to pass after one's own
fashion."

"Exactly;--and therefore you don't stay with my aunt. I understand it
all completely."

"Now you mean to be ill-natured!"

"I mean to say that I don't like Sundays at Perivale at all, and that
I should do just as you do if I had the power. But women,--women,
that is, of my age,--are such slaves! We are forced to give an
obedience for which we can see no cause, and for which we can
understand no necessity. I couldn't tell my aunt that I meant to go
away on Saturday."

"You have no business which makes imperative calls upon your time."

"That means that I can't plead pretended excuses. But the true reason
is that we are dependent."

"There is something in that, I suppose."

"Not that I am dependent on her. But my position generally is
dependent, and I cannot assist myself."

Captain Aylmer found it difficult to make any answer to this, feeling
the subject to be one which could hardly be discussed between him and
Miss Amedroz. He not unnaturally looked to be the heir of his aunt's
property, and any provision made out of that property for Clara,
would so far lessen that which would come to him. For anything that
he knew, Mrs. Winterfield might leave everything she possessed to
her niece. The old lady had not been open and candid to him whom she
meant to favour in her will, as she had been to her to whom no such
favour was to be shown. But Captain Aylmer did know, with tolerable
accuracy, what was the state of affairs at Belton, and was aware
that Miss Amedroz had no prospect of maintenance on which to depend,
unless she could depend on her aunt. She was now pleading that she
was not dependent on that lady, and Captain Aylmer felt that she was
wrong. He was a man of the world, and was by no means inclined to
abandon any right that was his own; but it seemed to him that he
was almost bound to say some word to show that in his opinion Clara
should hold herself bound to comply with her aunt's requirements.

"Dependence is a disagreeable word," he said; "and one never quite
knows what it means."

"If you were a woman you'd know. It means that I must stay at
Perivale on Sundays, while you can go up to London or down to
Yorkshire. That's what it means."

"What you do mean, I think, is this;--that you owe a duty to
your aunt, the performance of which is not altogether agreeable.
Nevertheless it would be foolish in you to omit it."

"It isn't that;--not that at all. It would not be foolish, not in
your sense of the word, but it would be wrong. My aunt has been kind
to me, and therefore I am bound to her for this service. But she is
kind to you also, and yet you are not bound. That's why I complain.
You sail away under false pretences, and yet you think you do your
duty. You have to see your lawyer,--which means going to your club;
or to attend to your tenants,--which means hunting and shooting."

"I haven't got any tenants."

"You know very well that you could remain over Sunday without doing
any harm to anybody;--only you don't like going to church three
times, and you don't like hearing my aunt read a sermon afterwards.
Why shouldn't you stay, and I go to the club?"

"With all my heart, if you can manage it."

"But I can't; we ain't allowed to have clubs, or shooting, or to
have our own way in anything, putting forward little pretences about
lawyers."

"Come, I'll stay if you'll ask me."

"I'm sure I won't do that. In the first place you'd go to sleep, and
then she would be offended; and I don't know that your sufferings
would make mine any lighter. I'm not prepared to alter the ways of
the world, but I feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes."

Mrs. Winterfield inhabited a large brick house in the centre of the
town. It had a long frontage to the street; for there was not only
the house itself, with its three square windows on each side of the
door, and its seven windows over that, and again its seven windows in
the upper story,--but the end of the coach-house also abutted on the
street, on which was the family clock, quite as much respected in
Perivale as was the town-clock; and between the coach-house and the
mansion there was the broad entrance into the yard, and the entrance
also to the back door. No Perivalian ever presumed to doubt that Mrs.
Winterfield's house was the most important house in the town. Nor
did any stranger doubt it on looking at the frontage. But then it
was in all respects a town house to the eye,--that is, an English
town house, being as ugly and as respectable as unlimited bricks and
mortar could make it. Immediately opposite to Mrs. Winterfield lived
the leading doctor and a retired builder, so that the lady's eye was
not hurt by any sign of a shop. The shops, indeed, came within a very
few yards of her on either side; but as the neighbouring shops on
each side were her own property, this was not unbearable. To me, had
I lived there, the incipient growth of grass through some of the
stones which formed the margin of the road would have been altogether
unendurable. There is no sign of coming decay which is so melancholy
to the eye as any which tells of a decrease in the throng of men. Of
men or horses there was never any throng now in that end of Perivale.
That street had formed part of the main line of road from Salisbury
to Taunton, and coaches, waggons, and posting-carriages had been
frequent on it; but now, alas! it was deserted. Even the omnibuses
from the railway-station never came there unless they were ordered to
call at Mrs. Winterfield's door. For Mrs. Winterfield herself, this
desolation had, I think, a certain melancholy attraction. It suited
her tone of mind and her religious views that she should be thus
daily reminded that things of this world were passing away and going
to destruction. She liked to have ocular proof that grass was growing
in the highways under mortal feet, and that it was no longer worth
man's while to renew human flags in human streets. She was drawing
near to the pavements which would ever be trodden by myriads of
bright sandals, and which yet would never be worn, and would be
carried to those jewelled causeways on which no weed could find a
spot for its useless growth.

Behind the house there was a square prim garden, arranged in
parallelograms, tree answering to tree at every corner, round which
it was still her delight to creep when the weather permitted. Poor
Clara! how much advice she had received during these creepings, and
how often had she listened to inquiries as to the schooling of the
gardener's children. Mrs. Winterfield was always unhappy about her
gardener. Serious footmen are very plentiful, and even coachmen are
to be found who, at a certain rate of extra payment, will be punctual
at prayer time, and will promise to read good little books; but
gardeners, as a class, are a profane people, who think themselves
entitled to claim liberty of conscience, and who will not submit to
the domestic despotism of a serious Sunday. They live in cottages
by themselves, and choose to have an opinion of their own on church
matters. Mrs. Winterfield was aware that she ought to bid high for
such a gardener as she wanted. A man must be paid well who will
submit to daily inquiries as to the spiritual welfare of himself, his
wife, and family. But even though she did bid high, and though she
paid generously, no gardener would stop with her. One conscientious
man attempted to bargain for freedom from religion during the six
unimportant days of the week, being strong, and willing therefore to
give up his day of rest; but such liberty could not be allowed to
him, and he also went. "He couldn't stop," he said, "in justice to
the greenhouses, when missus was so constant down upon him about his
sprittual backsliding. And, after all, where did he backslide? It was
only a pipe of tobacco with the babby in his arms, instead of that
darned evening lecture."

Poor Mrs. Winterfield! She had been strong in her youth, and had
herself sat through evening lectures with a fortitude which other
people cannot attain. And she was strong too in her age, with the
strength of a martyr, submitting herself with patience to wearinesses
which are insupportable to those who have none of the martyr spirit.
The sermons of Perivale were neither bright, nor eloquent, nor
encouraging. All the old vicar or the young curate could tell she had
heard hundreds of times. She knew it all by heart, and could have
preached their sermons to them better than they could preach them to
her. It was impossible that she could learn anything from them; and
yet she would sit there thrice a day, suffering from cold in winter,
from cough in spring, from heat in summer, and from rheumatism in
autumn; and now that her doctor had forbidden her to go more than
twice, recommending her to go only once, she really thought that she
regarded the prohibition as a grievance. Indeed, to such as her, that
expectation of the jewelled causeway, and of the perfect pavement
that shall never be worn, must be everything. But if she was
right,--right as to herself and others,--then why has the world been
made so pleasant? Why is the fruit of the earth so sweet; and the
trees,--why are they so green; and the mountains so full of glory?
Why are women so lovely? and why is it that the activity of man's
mind is the only sure forerunner of man's progress? In listening
thrice a day to outpourings from the clergymen at Perivale, there
certainly was no activity of mind.

Now, in these days, Mrs. Winterfield was near to her reward. That she
had ensured that I cannot doubt. She had fed the poor, and filled the
young full with religious teachings,--perhaps not wisely, and in her
own way only too well, but yet as her judgment had directed her. She
had cared little for herself,--forgiving injuries done to her, and
not forgiving those only which she thought were done to the Lord. She
had lived her life somewhat as the martyr lived, who stood for years
on his pillar unmoved, while his nails grew through his flesh. So had
she stood, doing, I fear, but little positive good with her large
means,--but thinking nothing of her own comfort here, in comparison
with the comfort of herself and others in the world to which she was
going.

On this occasion her nephew and niece reached her together; the prim
boy, with the white cotton gloves and the low four-wheeled carriage,
having been sent down to meet Clara. For Mrs. Winterfield was a lady
who thought it unbecoming that her niece,--though only an adopted
niece,--should come to her door in an omnibus. Captain Aylmer had
driven the four-wheeled carriage from the station, dispossessing the
boy, and the luggage had been confided to the public conveyance.

"It is very fortunate that you should come together," said Mrs.
Winterfield. "I didn't know when to expect you, Fred. Indeed, you
never say at what hour you'll come."

"I think it safer to allow myself a little margin, aunt, because one
has so many things to do."

"I suppose it is so with a gentleman," said Mrs. Winterfield. After
which Clara looked at Captain Aylmer, but did not betray any of her
suspicions. "But I knew Clara would come by this train," continued
the old lady; "so I sent Tom to meet her. Ladies always can be
punctual; they can do that at any rate." Mrs. Winterfield was one of
those women who have always believed that their own sex is in every
respect inferior to the other.




CHAPTER VIII.

CAPTAIN AYLMER MEETS HIS CONSTITUENTS.


On the first evening of their visit Captain Aylmer was very attentive
to his aunt. He was quite alive to the propriety of such attentions,
and to their expediency; and Clara was amused as she watched him
while he sat by her side, by the hour together, answering little
questions and making little remarks suited to the temperament of the
old lady's mind. She, herself, was hardly called upon to join in the
conversation on that evening, and as she sat and listened, she could
not but think that Will Belton would have been less adroit, but that
he would also have been more straightforward. And yet why should
not Captain Aylmer talk to his aunt? Will Belton would also have
talked to his aunt if he had one, but then he would have talked his
own talk, and not his aunt's talk. Clara could hardly make up her
mind whether Captain Aylmer was or was not a sincere man. On the
following day Aylmer was out all the morning, paying visits among his
constituents, and at three o'clock he was to make his speech in the
Town-hall. Special places in the gallery were to be kept for Mrs.
Winterfield and her niece, and the old woman was quite resolved that
she would be there. As the day advanced she became very fidgety, and
at length she was quite alive to the perils of having to climb up the
Town-hall stairs; but she persevered, and at ten minutes before three
she was seated in her place.

"I suppose they will begin with prayer," she said to Clara. Clara,
who knew nothing of the manner in which things were done at such
meetings, said that she supposed so. A town councillor's wife who
sat on the other side of Mrs. Winterfield, here took the liberty of
explaining that as the Captain was going to talk politics there would
be no prayers. "But they have prayers in the Houses of Parliament,"
said Mrs. Winterfield, with much anger. To this the town councillor's
wife, who was almost silenced by the great lady's wrath, said that
indeed she did not know. After this Mrs. Winterfield continued to
hope for the best, till the platform was filled and the proceedings
had commenced. Then she declared the present men of Perivale to be
a godless set, and expressed herself very sorry that her nephew had
ever had anything to do with them. "No good can come of it, my dear,"
she said. Clara from the beginning had feared that no good would come
of her aunt's visit to the Town-hall.

The business was put on foot at once, and with some little
flourishing at the commencement, Captain Aylmer made his speech;--the
same speech which we have all heard and read so often, specially
adapted to the meridian of Perivale. He was a Conservative, and of
course he told his hearers that a good time was coming; that he and
his family were really about to buckle themselves to the work, and
that Perivale would hear things that would surprise it. The malt tax
was to go, and the farmers were to have free trade in beer,--the
arguments from the other side having come beautifully round in their
appointed circle,--and old England was to be old England once again.
He did the thing tolerably well, as such gentlemen usually do, and
Perivale was contented with its member, with the exception of one
Perivalian. To Mrs. Winterfield, sitting up there and listening with
all her ears, it seemed that he had hitherto omitted all allusion to
any subject that was worthy of mention. At last he said some word
about the marriage and divorce court, condemning the iniquity of
the present law, to which Perivale had opposed itself violently by
petition and general meetings; and upon hearing this Mrs. Winterfield
had thumped with her umbrella, and faintly cheered him with her weak
old voice. But the surrounding Perivalians had heard the cheer, and
it was repeated backwards and forwards through the room, till the
member's aunt thought that it might be her nephew's mission to annul
that godless Act of Parliament, and restore the matrimonial bonds of
England to their old rigidity. When Captain Aylmer came out to hand
her up to her little carriage, she patted him, and thanked him, and
encouraged him; and on her way home she congratulated herself to
Clara that she should have such a nephew to leave behind her in her
place.

Captain Aylmer was dining with the mayor on that evening, and Mrs.
Winterfield was therefore able to indulge herself in talking about
him. "I don't see much of young men, of course," she said; "but I do
not even hear of any that are like him." Again Clara thought of her
cousin Will. Will was not at all like Frederic Aylmer; but was he not
better? And yet, as she thought thus, she remembered that she had
refused her cousin Will because she loved that very Frederic Aylmer
whom her mind was thus condemning.

"I'm sure he does his duty as a member of Parliament very well," said
Clara.

"That alone would not be much; but when that is joined to so much
that is better, it is a great deal. I am told that very few of the
men in the House now are believers at all."

"Oh, aunt!"

"It is terrible to think of, my dear."

"But, aunt; they have to take some oath, or something of that sort,
to show that they are Christians."

"Not now, my dear. They've done away with all that since we had Jew
members. An atheist can go into Parliament now; and I'm told that
most of them are that, or nearly as bad. I can remember when no
Papist could sit in Parliament. But they seem to me to be doing away
with everything. It's a great comfort to me that Frederic is what he
is."

"I'm sure it must be, aunt."

Then there was a pause, during which, however, Mrs. Winterfield gave
no sign that the conversation was to be considered as being over.
Clara knew her aunt's ways so well, that she was sure something more
was coming, and therefore waited patiently, without any thought of
taking up her book. "I was speaking to him about you yesterday," Mrs.
Winterfield said at last.

"That would not interest him very much."

"Why not? Do you suppose he is not interested in those I love?
Indeed, it did interest him; and he told me what I did not know
before, and what you ought to have told me."

Clara now blushed, she knew not why, and became agitated. "I don't
know that I have kept anything from you that I ought to have told,"
she said.

"He says that the provision made for you by your father has all been
squandered."

"If he used that word he has been very unkind," said Clara, angrily.

"I don't know what word he used, but he was not unkind at all; he
never is. I think he was very generous."

"I do not want his generosity, aunt."

"That is nonsense, my dear. If he has told me the truth, what have
you to depend on?"

"I don't want to depend on anything. I hate hearing about it."

"Clara, I wonder you can talk in that way. If you were only seventeen
it would be very foolish; but at your age it is inexcusable. When I
am gone, and your father is gone, who is to provide for you? Will
your cousin do it--Mr. Belton, who is to have the property?"

"Yes, he would--if I would let him;--of course I would not let him.
But, aunt, pray do not go on. I would sooner have to starve than talk
about it at all."

There was another pause; but Clara again knew that the conversation
was not over; and she knew also that it would be vain for her to
endeavour to begin another subject. Nor could she think of anything
else to say, so much was she agitated.

"What makes you suppose that Mr. Belton would be so liberal?" asked
Mrs. Winterfield.

"I don't know. I can't say. He is the nearest relation I shall have;
and of all the people I ever knew he is the best, and the most
generous, and the least selfish. When he came to us papa was quite
hostile to him--disliking his very name; but when the time came, papa
could not bear to think of his going, because he had been so good."

"Clara!"

"Well, aunt."

"I hope you know my affection for you."

"Of course I do, aunt; and I hope you trust mine for you also."

"Is there anything between you and Mr. Belton besides cousinship?"

"Nothing."

"Because if I thought that, my trouble would of course be at an end."

"There is nothing;--but pray do not let me be a trouble to you."
Clara, for a moment, almost resolved to tell her aunt the whole
truth; but she remembered that she would be treating her cousin badly
if she told the story of his rejection.

There was another short period of silence, and then Mrs. Winterfield
went on. "Frederic thinks that I should make some provision for you
by will. That, of course, is the same as though he offered to do it
himself. I told him that it would be so, and I read him my will last
night. He said that that made no difference, and recommended me to
add a codicil. I asked him how much I ought to give you, and he said
fifteen hundred pounds. There will be as much as that after burying
me without burden to the estate. You must acknowledge that he has
been very generous."

But Clara, in her heart, did not at all thank Captain Aylmer for
his generosity. She would have had everything from him, or nothing.
It was grievous to her to think that she should owe to him a bare
pittance to keep her out of the workhouse,--to him who had twice
seemed to be on the point of asking her to share everything with him.
She did not love her cousin Will as she loved him; but her cousin
Will's assurance to her that he would treat her with a brother's
care was sweeter to her by far than Frederic Aylmer's well-balanced
counsel to his aunt on her behalf. In her present mood, too, she
wanted no one to have forethought for her; she desired no provision;
for her, in the discomfiture of heart, there was consolation in the
feeling that when she should find herself alone in the world, she
would have been ill-treated by her friends all round her. There was a
charm in the prospect of her desolation of which she did not wish to
be robbed by the assurance of some seventy pounds a year, to be given
to her by Captain Frederic Aylmer. To be robbed of one's grievance is
the last and foulest wrong,--a wrong under which the most enduring
temper will at last yield and become soured,--by which the strongest
back will be broken. "Well, my dear," continued Mrs. Winterfield,
when Clara made no response to this appeal for praise.

"It is so hard for me to say anything about it, aunt. What can I say
but that I don't want to be a burden to any one?"

"That is a position which very few women can attain,--that is, very
few single women."

"I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the
time they are thirty," said Clara with a fierce energy which
absolutely frightened her aunt.

"Clara! how can you say anything so wicked,--so abominably wicked!"

"Anything would be better than being twitted in this way. How can I
help it that I am not a man and able to work for my bread? But I am
not above being a housemaid, and so Captain Aylmer shall find. I'd
sooner be a housemaid, with nothing but my wages, than take the money
which you say he is to give me. It will be of no use, aunt, for I
shall not take it."

"It is I that am to leave it to you. It is not to be a present from
Frederic."

"It is the same thing, aunt. He says you are to do it; and you told
me just now that it was to come out of his pocket."

"I should have done it myself long ago, had you told me all the truth
about your father's affairs."

"How was I to tell you? I would sooner have bitten my tongue out. But
I will tell you the truth now. If I had known that all this was to be
said to me about money, and that our poverty was to be talked over
between you and Captain Aylmer, I would not have come to Perivale. I
would rather that you should be angry with me and think that I had
forgotten you."

"You would not say that, Clara, if you remembered that this will
probably be your last visit to me."

"No, no; it will not be the last. But do not talk about these things.
And it will be so much better that I should be here when he is not
here."

"I had hoped that when I died you might both be with me together,--as
husband and wife."

"Such hopes never come to anything."

"I still think that he would wish it."

"That is nonsense, aunt. It is indeed, for neither of us wish it." A
lie on such a subject from a woman under such circumstances is hardly
to be considered a lie at all. It is spoken with no mean object, and
is the only bulwark which the woman has ready at her need to cover
her own weakness.

"From what he said yesterday," continued Mrs. Winterfield, "I think
it is your own fault."

"Pray,--pray do not talk in that way. It cannot be matter of any
fault that two people do not want to marry each other."

"Of course I asked him no positive question. It would be indelicate
even in me to have done that. But he spoke as though he thought very
highly of you."

"No doubt he does. And so do I of Mr. Possitt."

"Mr. Possitt is a very excellent young man," said Mrs. Winterfield,
gravely. Mr. Possitt was, indeed, her favourite curate at Perivale,
and always dined at the house on Sundays between services, when Mrs.
Winterfield was very particular in seeing that he took two glasses of
her best port wine to support him. "But Mr. Possitt has nothing but
his curacy."

"There is no danger, aunt, I can assure you."

"I don't know what you call danger; but Frederic seemed to think that
you are always sharp with him. You don't want to quarrel with him, I
hope, because I love him better than any one in the world?"

"Oh, aunt, what cruel things you say to me without thinking of them!"

"I do not mean to be cruel, but I will say nothing more about him. As
I told you before, that I had not thought it expedient to leave away
any portion of my little property from Frederic,--believing as I
did then, that the money intended for you by your father was still
remaining,--it is best that you should now know that I have at last
learnt the truth, and that I will at once see my lawyer about making
this change."

"Dear aunt, of course I thank you."

"I want no thanks, Clara. I humbly strive to do what I believe to be
my duty. I have never felt myself to be more than a steward of my
money. That I have often failed in my stewardship I know well;--for
in what duties do we not all fail?" Then she gently laid herself
back in her arm-chair, closing her eyes, while she kept fast clasped
in her hands the little book of daily devotion which she had been
striving to read when the conversation had been commenced. Clara
knew then that nothing more was to be said, and that she was not at
present to interrupt her aunt. From her posture, and the closing of
her eyelids, Mrs. Winterfield might have been judged to be asleep;
but Clara could see the gentle motion of her lips, and was aware that
her aunt was solacing herself with prayer.

Clara was angry with herself, and angry with all the world. She knew
that the old lady who was sitting then before her was very good; and
that all this that had now been said had come from pure goodness, and
a desire that strict duty might be done; and Clara was angry with
herself in that she had not been more ready with her thanks, and
more demonstrative with her love and gratitude. Mrs. Winterfield was
affectionate as well as good, and her niece's coldness, as the niece
well knew, had hurt her sorely. But still what could Clara have done
or said? She told herself that it was beyond her power to burst out
into loud praises of Captain Aylmer; and of such nature was the
gratitude which Mrs. Winterfield had desired. She was not grateful
to Captain Aylmer, and wanted nothing that was to come from his
generosity. And then her mind went away to that other portion of her
aunt's discourse. Could it be possible that this man was in truth
attached to her, and was repelled simply by her own manner? She was
aware that she had fallen into a habit of fighting with him, of
sparring against him with words about indifferent things, and calling
his conduct in question in a manner half playful and half serious.
Could it be the truth that she was thus robbing herself of that which
would be to her,--as to herself she had frankly declared,--the one
treasure which she would desire? Twice, as has been said before,
words had seemed to tremble on his lips which might have settled
the question for her for ever; and on both occasions, as she knew,
she herself had helped to laugh off the precious word that had been
coming. But had he been thoroughly in earnest,--in earnest as she
would have him to be,--no laugh would have deterred him from his
purpose. Could she have laughed Will Belton out of his declaration?

At last the lips ceased to move, and she knew that her aunt was in
truth asleep. The poor old lady hardly ever slept at night; but
nature, claiming something of its due, would give her rest such as
this in her arm-chair by the fire-side. They were sitting in a large
double drawing-room upstairs, in which there were, as was customary
with Mrs. Winterfield in winter, two fires; and the candles were in
the back-room, while the two ladies sat in that looking out into the
street. This Mrs. Winterfield did to save her eyes from the candles,
and yet to be within reach of light if it were wanted. And Clara also
sat motionless in the dark, careful not to disturb her aunt, and
desirous of being with her when she should awake. Captain Aylmer had
declared his purpose of being home early from the Mayor's dinner, and
the ladies were to wait for his arrival before tea was brought to
them. Clara was herself almost asleep when the door was opened, and
Captain Aylmer entered the room.

"H--sh!" she said, rising gently from her chair, and putting up her
finger. He saw her by the dull light of the fire, and closed the door
without a sound. Clara then crept into the back-room, and he followed
her with noiseless step. "She did not sleep at all last night," said
Clara; "and now the unusual excitement of the day has fatigued her,
and I think it is better not to wake her." The rooms were large,
and they were able to place themselves at such a distance from the
sleeper that their low words could hardly disturb her.

"Was she very tired when she got home?" he asked.

"Not very. She has been talking much since that."

"Has she spoken about her will to you?"

"Yes;--she has."

"I thought she would." Then he was silent, as though he expected that
she would speak again on that matter. But she had no wish to discuss
her aunt's will with him, and therefore, to break the silence, asked
him some trifling question. "Are you not home earlier than you
expected?"

"It was very dull, and there was nothing more to be said. I did come
away early, and perhaps have given affront. I hope you will accept
the compliment implied."

"Your aunt will, when she wakes. She will be delighted to find you
here."

"I am awake," said Mrs. Winterfield. "I heard Frederic come in. It is
very good of him to come so soon. Clara, my dear, we will have tea."

During tea, Captain Aylmer was called upon to give an account of
the Mayor's feast,--how the rector had said grace before dinner,
and Mr. Possitt had done so after dinner, and how the soup had been
uneatable. "Dear me!" said Mrs. Winterfield. "And yet his wife was
housekeeper formerly in a family that lived very well!" The Mrs.
Winterfields of this world allow themselves little spiteful pleasures
of this kind, repenting of them, no doubt, in those frequent moments
in which they talk to their friends of their own terrible vilenesses.
Captain Aylmer then explained that his own health had been drunk,
and his aunt desired to know whether, in returning thanks, he had
been able to say anything further against that wicked Divorce Act
of Parliament. This her nephew was constrained to answer with a
negative, and so the conversation was carried on till tea was over.
She was very anxious to hear every word that he could be made to
utter as to his own doings in Parliament, and as to his doings in
Perivale, and hung upon him with that wondrous affection which old
people with warm hearts feel for those whom they have selected as
their favourites. Clara saw it all, and knew that her aunt was almost
doting.

"I think I'll go up to bed now, my dears," said Mrs. Winterfield,
when she had taken her cup of tea. "I am tired with those weary
stairs in the Town-hall, and I shall be better in my own room." Clara
offered to go with her, but this attendance her aunt declined,--as
she did always. So the bell was rung, and the old maid-servant walked
off with her mistress, and Miss Amedroz and Captain Aylmer were left
together.

"I don't think she will last long," said Captain Aylmer, soon after
the door was closed.

"I should be sorry to believe that; but she is certainly much
altered."

"She has great courage to keep her up,--and a feeling that she should
not give way, but do her duty to the last. In spite of all that,
however, I can see how changed she is since the summer. Have you
ever thought how sad it will be if she should be alone when the day
comes?"

"She has Martha, who is more to her now than any one else,--unless it
is you."

"You could not remain with her over Christmas, I suppose?"

"Who, I? What would my father do? Papa is as old, or nearly as old,
as my aunt."

"But he is strong."

"He is very lonely. He would be more lonely than she is, for he has
no such servant as Martha to be with him. Women can do better than
men, I think, when they come to my aunt's age."

From this they got into a conversation as to the character of the
lady with whom they were both so nearly connected, and, in spite of
all that Clara could do to prevent it, continual references were
made by Captain Aylmer to her money and her will, and the need of an
addition to that will on Clara's behalf. At last she was driven to
speak out. "Captain Aylmer," she said, "the subject is so distasteful
to me, that I must ask you not to speak about it."

"In my position I am driven to think about it."

"I cannot, of course, help your thoughts; but I can assure you that
they are unnecessary."

"It seems to me so hard that there should be such a gulf between you
and me." This he said after he had been silent for a while; and as he
spoke he looked away from her at the fire.

"I don't know that there is any particular gulf," she replied.

"Yes, there is. And it is you that make it. Whenever I attempt to
speak to you as a friend you draw yourself off from me, and shut
yourself up. I know that it is not jealousy."

"Jealousy, Captain Aylmer!"

"Jealousy with my aunt, I mean."

"No, indeed."

"You are infinitely too proud for that; but I am sure that a stranger
seeing it all would think that it was so."

"I don't know what it is that I do or that I ought not to do. But
all my life everything that I have done at Perivale has always been
wrong."

"It would have been so natural that you and I should be friends."

"If we are enemies, Captain Aylmer, I don't know it."

"But if ever I venture to speak of your future life you always repel
me;--as though you were determined to let me know that it should not
be a matter of care to me."

"That is exactly what I am determined to let you know. You are, or
will be

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