Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

31. CHAPTER XXXI: TAKING POSSESSION (continued)

'I am going across to the cottage immediately after dinner,' he said to his sister.

'Have you an appointment?'

'No; I have no appointment. I suppose a man doesn't want an appointment to go and see his own cousin down in the country.'

'I don't know what their habits are.'

'I shan't ask to go in; but I want to see her.'

Mary looked at him with loving, sorrowing eyes, but she said no more. She loved him so well that she would have given her right hand to get for him what he wanted but she sorrowed to think that he should want such a thing so sorely. Immediately after his dinner, he took his hat and went out without saying a word further, and made his way once more across to the gate of the cottage. It was a lovely summer evening, at that period of the year in which our summer evenings just begin, when the air is sweeter and the flowers more fragrant, and the forms of the foliage more lovely than at any other time. it was now eight o'clock, but it was hardly as yet evening; none at least of the gloom of evening had come, though the sun was low in the heavens. At the cottage they were all sitting out on the lawn; and as Belton came near he was seen by them, and he saw them.

'I told you so,' said Mrs Askerton, to Clara, in a whisper.

'He is not coming in,' Clara answered. 'He is going on.'

But when he had come nearer, Colonel Askerton called to him over the garden paling, and asked him to join them. He was now standing within ten or fifteen yards of them, though the fence divided them. 'I have come to ask my Cousin Clara to take a walk with me,' he said. 'She can be back by your tea time.' He made his request very placidly, and did not in any way look like a lover.