“I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!” said Mrs. Markleham.

(“Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any more!” muttered my aunt.)

“It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,” said Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, “that I was agitated and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry. But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.”

“⁠—At Saint Alphage, Canterbury,” observed Mrs. Markleham.

(“Confound the woman!” said my aunt, “she won’t be quiet!”)