The Belton Estate was written shortly after Can You Forgive Her?, and the two novels have a principal theme in common: a woman trying to decide between two suitors, neither ineligible but differing greatly in their desirable and undesirable qualities [REF].
A theme in this novel, not uncommon among other Victorian authors but unusual in Trollope's work, is what John Halperin calls "mediated desire": the desirability of a thing increasing with the difficulty of obtaining it [REF].