"He is married!" cried Mrs. Venables, beginning in the middle like a
modern novelist.
"Indeed?" returned the matter-of-fact clergyman, with equal
directness--"and who is he?"
"Your neighbor and your patron--Mr. Steel!"
"Married?" repeated Mrs. Woodgate, with tremendous emphasis. "Mr.
Steel?"
"This is news!" declared her husband, as though he had expected none
worthy of the name. And they both demanded further particulars, at which
Mrs. Venables shook her expensive bonnet with great relish.
"Do you know Mr. Steel so well--so much better than we do--and can you
ask for particulars about anything he ever does? His marriage,"
continued Mrs. Venables, "like everything else about him, is 'wrop in
mystery,' as one of those vulgar creatures says in Dickens, but I really
forget which. It was never announced in the _Times_; for that I can
vouch myself. Was ever anything more like him, or less like anybody
else? To disappear for six months, and then turn up with a wife!"
"But has he turned up?" cried the vicar's young wife, forgetting for a
moment a certain preoccupation caused by the arrival of the tea-tray,
and by a rapid resignation to the thickness of the bread and butter and
the distressing absence of such hot things as would have been in
readiness if Mrs.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120