Mr. Amedroz had uttered various complaints
as to the visitor's heartlessness in not having written to name the
hour of his arrival, and was manifestly intending to make the most of
the grievance should he not present himself before six;--but this
indulgence was cut short by the sound of the gig wheels. Mr. Amedroz
and his daughter were sitting in a small drawing-room, which looked
out to the front of the house and he, seated in his accustomed
chair, near the window, could see the arrival. For a moment or two
he remained quiet in his chair, as though he would not allow so
insignificant a thing as his cousin's coming to ruffle him;--but he
could not maintain this dignified indifference, and before Belton was
out of the gig he had shuffled out into the hall.

Clara followed her father almost unconsciously and soon found herself
shaking hands with a big man, over six feet high, broad in the
shoulders, large limbed, with bright quick grey eyes, a large mouth,
teeth almost too perfect and a well-formed nose, with thick short
brown hair and small whiskers which came but half-way down his
cheeks--a decidedly handsome man with a florid face, but still,
perhaps, with something of the promised roughness of the farmer. But
a more good-humoured looking countenance Clara felt at once that she
had never beheld.

"And you are the little girl that I remember when I was a boy at Mr.
Folliott's?" he said. His voice was clear, and rather loud, but it
sounded very pleasantly in that sad old house.

"Yes; I am the little girl," said Clara, smiling.

"Dear, dear! and that's twenty years ago now," said he.

"But you oughtn't to remind me of that, Mr. Belton."

"Oughtn't I? Why not?"

"Because it shows how very old I am."

"Ah, yes;--to be sure. But there's nobody here that signifies. How
well I remember this room;--and the old tower out there. It isn't
changed a bit!"

"Not to the outward eye, perhaps," said the squire.

"That's what I mean. So they're making hay still. Our hay has been
all up these three weeks. I didn't know you ever meadowed the park."
Here he trod with dreadful severity upon the corns of Mr. Amedroz,
but he did not perceive it. And when the squire muttered something
about a tenant, and the inconvenience of keeping land in his own
hands, Belton would have gone on with the subject had not Clara
changed the conversation. The squire complained bitterly of this to
Clara when they were alone, saying that it was very