Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

30. CHAPTER XXX: MARY BELTON (continued)

'But then she knows everything so well,' said Clara.

'And how like her brother she is!'

'Yes there is a great family likeness.'

'And in character, too. I'm sure you'd find, if you were to try her, that she has all his personal firmness, though she can't show it as he does by kicking out his feet and clenching his fist.'

'I'm glad you like her,' said Clara.

'I do like her very much.'

'It is so odd the way you have changed. You used to speak of him as though he was merely a clod of a farmer, and of her as a stupid old maid. Now, nothing is too good to say of them.'

'Exactly, my dear and if you do not understand why, you are not so clever as I take you to be.'

Life went on very pleasantly with them at Belton for two or three weeks but with this drawback as regarded Clara, that she had no means of knowing what was to be the course of her future life. During these weeks she twice received letters from her Cousin Will, and answered both of them. But these letters referred to matters of business which entailed no contradiction to certain details of money due to the estate before the old squire's death, and to that vexed question of Aunt Winterfield's legacy, which had by this time drifted into Belton's hands, and as to which he was inclined to act in accordance with his cousin's wishes, though he was assured by Mr Green that the legacy was as good a legacy as had ever been left by an old woman. 'I think,' he said in his last letter,' that we shall be able to throw him over in spite of Mr Green.' Clara, as she read this, could not but remember that the man to be thrown over was the man to whom she had been engaged, and she could not but remember also all the circumstances of the intended legacy of her aunt's death, and of the scenes which had immediately followed her death. It was so odd that William Belton should now be discussing with her the means of evading all her aunt's intentions and that he should be doing so, not as her accepted lover. He had, indeed, called himself her brother, but he was in truth her rejected lover.