They knew that he was poor, but they all declared that he was never mean.

He was a real gentleman,--was this last Amedroz of the family; therefore they curtsied low, and bowed on his reappearance among them, and made all those signs of reverential awe which are common to the poor when they feel reverence for the presence of a superior.
Clara was there with him, but she had shown herself in the pew for four or five weeks before this.

She had not been at home when the fearful news had reached Belton, being at that time with a certain lady who lived on the further side of the county, at Perivale,--a certain Mrs.Winterfield, born a Folliott, a widow, who stood to Miss Amedroz in the place of an aunt.

Mrs.Winterfield was, in truth, the sister of a gentleman who had married Clara's aunt,--there having been marriages and intermarriages between the Winterfields and the Folliotts, and the Belton-Amedroz families.

With this lady in Perivale, which I maintain to be the dullest little town in England, Miss Amedroz was staying when the news reached her father, and when it was brought direct from London to herself.