nothing to do with it."

Clara, perceiving that matters were not going quite pleasantly
between her old and new friend, thought it best to take her
departure. Belton, as he went, lifted his hat from his head, and
Clara could not keep herself from thinking that he was not only very
handsome, but that he looked very much like a gentleman, in spite of
his occupation as a farmer.

"By-bye, Clara," said Mrs. Askerton; "come down and see me to-morrow,
there's a dear. Don't forget what a dull life I have of it." Clara
said that she would come. "And I shall be so happy to see Mr. Belton
if he will call before he leaves you." At this Belton again raised
his hat from his head, and muttered some word or two of civility. But
this, his latter muttering, was different from the first, for he had
altogether regained his presence of mind.

"You didn't seem to get on very well with my friend," said Clara,
laughing, as soon as they had turned away from the cottage.

"Well, no;--that is to say, not particularly well or particularly
badly. At first I took her for somebody else I knew slightly ever so
long ago, and I was thinking of that other person at the time."

"And what was the other person's name?"

"I can't even remember that at the present moment."

"Mrs. Askerton was a Miss Oliphant."

"That wasn't the other lady's name. But, independently of that, they
can't be the same. The other lady married a Mr. Berdmore."

"A Mr. Berdmore!" Clara as she repeated the name felt convinced that
she had heard it before, and that she had heard it in connection
with Mrs. Askerton. She certainly had heard the name of Berdmore
pronounced, or had seen it written, or had in some shape come across
the name in Mrs. Askerton's presence; or at any rate somewhere on
the premises occupied by that lady. More than this she could not
remember; but the name, as she had now heard it from her cousin,
became at once distinctly connected in her memory with her friends at
the cottage.

"Yes," said Belton; "a Mr. Berdmore. I knew more of him than of her,
though for the matter of that, I knew very little of him either. She
was a fast-going girl, and his friends were very sorry. But I think
they are both dead or divorced, or that they have come to grief in
some way."

"And is Mrs. Askerton like the fast-going lady?"

"In a certain way. Not that I remember what the fast-going lady was
like; but there was something about this woman that put me in mind of
the