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 once 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.