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