Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

2. CHAPTER II: THE HEIR PROPOSES TO VISIT HIS COUSIN (continued)

In the little town of Belton, close to the church, there stood a pretty, small house, called Belton Cottage. It was so near the church that strangers always supposed it to be the parsonage; but the rectory stood away out in. the country, half a mile from the town, on the road to Redicote, and was a large house, three stories high, with grounds of its own, and very ugly. Here lived the old bachelor rector, seventy years of age, given much to long absences when he could achieve them, and never on good terms with his bishop. His two curates lived at Redicote, where there was a second church. Belton Cottage, which was occupied by Colonel Askerton and Mrs Askerton, was on the Amedroz property, and had been hired some two years since by the Colonel, who was then a stranger in the country and altogether unknown to the Belton people. But he had come there for shooting, and therefore his coming had been understood. Even as long ago as two years since, there had been neither use nor propriety in keeping the shooting for the squire's son, and it had been let with the cottage to Colonel Askerton. So Colonel Askerton had come there with his wife, and no one in the neighbourhood had known anything about them. Mr Amedroz, with his daughter, had called upon them, and gradually there had grown up an intimacy between Clara and Mrs Askerton. There was an opening from the garden of Belton Cottage into the park, so that familiar intercourse was easy, and Mrs Askerton was a woman who knew well how to make herself pleasant to such another woman as Miss Amedroz.

The reader may as well know at ones that rumours prejudicial to the Askertons reached Belton before they had been established there for six months. At Taunton, which was twenty miles distant, these rumours were very rife, and there were people there who knew with accuracy though probably without a grain of truth in their accuracy every detail in the history of Mrs Askerton's life. And something, too, reached Clara's ears something from old Mr Wright, the rector, who loved scandal, and was very ill-natured. 'A very nice woman,' the rector had said; 'but she does not seem to have any belongings in particular.' 'She has got a husband,' Clara had replied with some little indignation, for she had never loved Mr Wright. 'Yes; I suppose she has got a husband.' Then Clara had, in her own judgment, accused the rector of lying, evil-speaking, and slandering, and had increased the measure of her cordiality to Mrs Askerton. But something more she had heard on the same subject at Perivale. 'Before you throw yourself into close intimacy with the lady, I think you should know something about her,' Mrs Winterfield had said to her. ' I do know something about her; I know that she has the manners and education of a lady, and that she is living affectionately with her husband, who is devoted to her. What more ought I to know?' 'If you really do know all that, you know a great deal,' Mrs Winterfield had replied.