‘And I didn’t give her two minutes.’

’You never do give two minutes to anyone do you, Will?  But you’ll be back there at Christmas, and then she will have had time to turn it over in her mind.’

‘And you think that I may have a chance?’

‘Certainly you may have a chance.’

‘Although she was so sure about it?’

’She spoke of her own mind and her own heart as she knew them then.  But it depends chiefly on this, Will whether there is any one else.  For anything we know, she may be engaged now.’

‘Of course she may.’  Then Belton speculated on the extreme probability of such a contingency; arguing within his own heart that of course every unmarried man who might see Clara would want to marry her, and that there could not but be some one whom even she would be able to love.

When he had been home about a fortnight, there came a letter to him from Clara, which was a great treasure to him.  In truth, it simply told him of the completion of the cattle-shed, of her father’s health, and of the milk which the little cow gave; but she signed herself his affectionate cousin, and the letter was very gratifying to him.  There were two lines of a postscript, which could not but flatter him:  ’Papa is so anxious for Christmas, that you may be here again and so, indeed, am I also.’  Of course it will be understood that this was written before Clara’s visit to Perivale, and before Mrs Winterfield’s death.  Indeed, much happened in Clara’s history between the writing of that letter and Will Belton’s winter visit to the Castle.

But Christmas came at last, all too slowly for Will and he started on his journey.  On this occasion he arranged to stay a week in London, having a lawyer there whom he desired to see; and thinking, perhaps, that a short time spent among the theatres might assist him in his love troubles.

CHAPTER XIV

MR WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN LONDON

At the time of my story there was a certain Mr Green, a worthy attorney, who held chambers in Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, much to the profit of himself and family and to the profit and comfort also of a numerous body of clients a man much respected in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and beloved, I do not doubt, in the neighbourhood of Bushey, in which delightfully rural parish he was possessed of a genteel villa and ornamental garden.  With Mr Green’s private residence we shall, I believe, have no further concern; but to him at his chambers in Stone Buildings I must now introduce the reader of these memoirs.  He was a man not yet forty years of age, with still much of the salt of youth about him, a pleasant companion as well as a good lawyer, and one who knew men and things in London, as it is given to pleasant clever fellows, such as Joseph Green, to know them.  Now Mr Green and his father before him had been the legal