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.