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