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 ones 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.