ve pounds; the
exact interest at five per cent. for one year of the sum which his
aunt had left her. This was the first subject of which Belton thought
when he found himself again in the railway carriage, and he continued
thinking of it half the way down to Taunton. Seventy-five pounds!
As though this favoured lover were prepared to give her exactly her
due, and nothing more than her due! Had he been so placed, he, Will
Belton, what would he have done? Seventy-five pounds might have
been more money than she would have wanted, for he would have taken
her to his own house,--to his own bosom, as soon as she would have
permitted, and would have so laboured on her behalf, taking from her
shoulders all money troubles, that there would have been no question
as to principal or interest between them. At any rate he would not
have confined himself to sending to her the exact sum which was her
due. But then Aylmer was a cold-blooded man,--more like a fish than a
man. Belton told himself over and over again that he had discovered
that at the single glance which he had had when he saw Captain Aylmer
in Green's chambers. Seventy-five pounds indeed! He himself was
prepared to give his whole estate to her, if she would take it,--even
though she would not marry him, even though she was going to throw
herself away upon that fish! Then he felt somewhat as Hamlet did when
he jumped upon Laertes at the grave of Ophelia. Send her seventy-five
pounds indeed, while he was ready to drink up Esil for her, or to
make over to her the whole Belton estate, and thus abandon the idea
for ever of being Belton of Belton!

He reached Taunton in the middle of the night,--during the small
hours of the morning in a winter night; but yet he could not bring
himself to go to bed. So he knocked up an ostler at the nearest inn,
and ordered out a gig. He would go down to the village of Redicote,
on the Minehead road, and put up at the public-house there. He could
not now have himself driven at once to Belton Castle, as he would
have done had the old squire been alive. He fancied that his presence
would be a nuisance if he did so. So he went to the little inn at
Redicote, reaching that place between four and five o'clock in the
morning; and very uncomfortable he was when he got there. But in his
present frame of mind he preferred discomfort. He liked being tired
and cold, and felt, when he was put into a chill room, without fire,
and with a sanded floor, that thi