xt twelve
months--"

"Mrs. Askerton, I said nothing about twelve months."

"And now you are broken-hearted because he did not blurt it all out
before Colonel Askerton in a business interview, which was very
properly had at once, and in which he has had the exceeding good
taste to confine himself altogether to the one subject."

"I am not complaining."

"It was good taste; though if he had not been a bear he might have
asked after me, who am fighting his battles for him night and day."

"But what will he do next?"

"Eat his dinner, I should think, as it is now nearly five o'clock.
Your father used always to dine at five."

"I can't go to see Mary," she said, "till he comes here again."

"He will be here fast enough. I shouldn't wonder if he was to come
here to-night." And he did come again that night.

When Belton's interview was over in the Colonel's study, he left the
house,--without even asking after the mistress, as that mistress had
taken care to find out,--and went off, rambling about the estate
which was now his own. It was a beautiful place, and he was not
insensible to the gratification of being its owner. There is much
in the glory of ownership,--of the ownership of land and houses, of
beeves and woolly flocks, of wide fields and thick-growing woods,
even when that ownership is of late date, when it conveys to the
owner nothing but the realisation of a property on the soil; but
there is much more in it when it contains the memories of old years;
when the glory is the glory of race as well as the glory of power
and property. There had been Beltons of Belton living there for
many centuries, and now he was the Belton of the day, standing on
his own ground,--the descendant and representative of the Beltons
of old,--Belton of Belton without a flaw in his pedigree! He felt
himself to be proud of his position,--prouder than he could have been
of any other that might have been vouchsafed to him. And yet amidst
it all he was somewhat ashamed of his pride. "The man who can do it
for himself is the real man after all," he said. "But I have got
it by a fluke,--and by such a sad chance too!" Then he wandered on,
thinking of the circumstances under which the property had fallen
into his hands, and remembering how and when and where the first idea
had occurred to him of making Clara Amedroz his wife. He had then
felt that if he could only do that he could reconcile himself to the
heirship. And the idea had grown u