The Rector. To be sure, to be sure! But, you see, though I've heard a good deal of the Haygarths, it is all gossip—the merest gossip. People are so fond of gossip, you know—especially country people: I have no doubt you have remarked that. Yes, I have heard a great deal about Matthew Haygarth. My late clerk and sexton,—a very remarkable man, ninety-one when he died, and able to perform his duties very creditably within a year of his death—very creditably; but the hard winter of '56 took him off, poor fellow, and now I have a young man. Old Andrew Hone—that was my late clerk's name—was employed in this house when a lad, and was very fond of talking about Matthew Haygarth and his wife. She was a rich woman, you know, a very rich woman—the daughter of a brewer at Ullerton; and this house belonged to her—inherited from her father.

Myself. And did you gather from your clerk that Matthew Haygarth and his wife lived happily together?

The Rector. Well, yes, yes: I never heard anything to the contrary. They were not a young couple, you know. Rebecca Caulfield was forty years of age, and Matthew Haygarth was fifty-three when he married; so, you see, one could hardly call it a love-match. [Abrupt inroad of bouncing damsel, exclaiming "Pa!"] Don't you see I'm engaged, Sophia Louisa? Why are you not at your practice? [Sudden retreat of bouncing damsel, followed by the scrambling performance of scale of C major in adjoining chamber, which performance abruptly ceases after five minutes.] You see Mrs. Haygarth was not young, as I was about to observe when my daughter interrupted us; and she was perhaps a little more steadfast in her adherence to the newly arisen sect of Wesleyans than was pleasing to her husband, although he consented to become a member of that sect. But as their married life lasted only a year, they had little time for domestic unhappiness, even supposing them not to be adapted to each other.

Myself. Mrs Matthew Haygarth did not marry again?