n‚e Tagmaggert.  They were then just married, and had come down to Belton Castle immediately after their honeymoon trip.  How it had come to pass that such friendship had sprung up or rather how it had been revived it would be bootless here to say.  But old affiances, such as that which had existed between the Aylmer and the Amedroz families, do not allow themselves to die out easily, and it is well for us all that they should be long-lived.  So Captain Aylmer brought his bride to Belton Park, and a small fatted calf was killed, and the Askertons came to dinner on which occasion Captain Aylmer behaved very well, though we may imagine that he must have had some misgivings on the score of his young wife.  The Askertons came to dinner, and the old rector, and the squire from a neighbouring parish, and everything was very handsome and very dull.  Captain Aylmer was much pleased with his visit, and declared to Lady Emily that marriage had greatly improved Mi.  William Belton.  Now Will had been very dull the whole evening, and very unlike the fiery, violent, unreasonable man whom Captain Aylmer remembered to have met at the station hotel of the Great Northern Railway.

‘I was as sure of it as possible,’ Clara said to her husband that night.

‘Sure of what, my dear?’

‘That she would have a red nose.’

‘Who has got a red nose?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Will.  Who should have it but Lady Emily?’

‘Upon my word I didn’t observe it.’

’You never observe anything, Will; do you?  But don’t you think she is very plain?’

‘Upon my word I don’t know.  She isn’t as handsome as some people.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Will.  How old do you suppose her to be?’ ’How old?  Let me see.  Thirty, perhaps.’

‘If she’s not over forty, I’ll consent to change noses with her.’

‘No we won’t do that; not if I know it.’

’I cannot conceive why any man should marry such a woman as that.  Not but what she’s a very good woman, I dare say; only what can a man get by it?  To be sure there’s the title, if that’s worth anything.’  But Will Belton was never good for much conversation at this hour, and was too fast asleep to make any rejoinder to the last remark.

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK, the Belton estate ***

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