"
"Hilda, how wonderfully quick you are at reading these things! I see you
are right; but I could never have guessed so much myself from such small
premises."
"Well, what can you expect, my dear boy? A girl like this, brought up in
a country rectory, a girl of no intellect, busy at home with the fowls,
and the pastry, and the mothers' meetings--suddenly married offhand to a
wealthy man, and deprived of the occupations which were her salvation in
life, to be plunged into the whirl of a London season, and stranded at
its end for want of the diversions which, by dint of use, have become
necessaries of life to her!"
"Now, Hilda, you are practising upon my credulity. You can't possibly
tell from her look that she was brought up in a country rectory."
"Of course not. You forget. There my memory comes in. I simply remember
it."
"You remember it? How?"
"Why, just in the same way as I remembered your name and your mother's
when I was first introduced to you. I saw a notice once in the births,
deaths, and marriages--'At St. Alphege's, Millington, by the Rev.
Hugh Clitheroe, M.A., father of the bride, Peter Gubbins, Esq., of The
Laurels, Middleston, to Emilia Frances, third daughter of the Rev.
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