he looked as though he were
one of God's nobler creatures. Though always dignified he was ever
affable, and the poor liked him better than they might have done had
he passed his time in searching out their wants and supplying them.
They were proud of their squire, though he had done nothing for them.
It was something to them to have a man who could so carry himself
sitting in the family pew in their parish church. They knew that he
was poor, but they all declared that he was never mean. He was a
real gentleman,--was this last Amedroz of the family; therefore they
curtsied low, and bowed on his reappearance among them, and made all
those signs of reverential awe which are common to the poor when they
feel reverence for the presence of a superior.

Clara was there with him, but she had shown herself in the pew for
four or five weeks before this. She had not been at home when the
fearful news had reached Belton, being at that time with a certain
lady who lived on the further side of the county, at Perivale,--a
certain Mrs. Winterfield, born a Folliott, a widow, who stood to Miss
Amedroz in the place of an aunt. Mrs. Winterfield was, in truth, the
sister of a gentleman who had married Clara's aunt,--there having
been marriages and intermarriages between the Winterfields and
the Folliotts, and the Belton-Amedroz families. With this lady in
Perivale, which I maintain to be the dullest little town in England,
Miss Amedroz was staying when the news reached her father, and when
it was brought direct from London to herself. Instantly she had
hurried home, making the journey with all imaginable speed though her
heart was all but broken within her bosom. She had found her father
stricken to the ground, and it was the more necessary, therefore,
that she should exert herself. It would not do that she also should
yield to that longing for death which terrible calamities often
produce for a season.

Clara Amedroz, when she first heard the news of her brother's fate,
had felt that she was for ever crushed to the ground. She had known
too well what had been the nature of her brother's life, but she
had not expected or feared any such termination to his career as
this which had now come upon him--to the terrible affliction of all
belonging to him. She felt at first, as did also her father, that
she and he were annihilated as regards this world, not only by an
enduring grief, but also by a disgrace which would never allow her
again to