ng since
declared them both born to single blessedness; affirming it impossible
that the pale, retiring bookworm should ever summon courage to seek a
wife, or be able to obtain one if he did, and equally impossible that the
plain-looking, plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward
should ever find a husband.

They still continued to live at the vicarage, the lady dividing her time
between her father, her husband, and their poor parishioners,--and
subsequently her rising family; and now that the Reverend Michael
Millward has been gathered to his fathers, full of years and honours, the
Reverend Richard Wilson has succeeded him to the vicarage of Linden-hope,
greatly to the satisfaction of its inhabitants, who had so long tried and
fully proved his merits, and those of his excellent and well-loved
partner.

If you are interested in the after fate of that lady's sister, I can only
tell you--what perhaps you have heard from another quarter--that some
twelve or thirteen years ago she relieved the happy couple of her
presence by marrying a wealthy tradesman of L--; and I don't envy him his
bargain. I fear she leads him a rather uncomfortable life, though,
happily, he is too dull to perceive the extent of his misfortune. I have
little enough to do with her myself: we have not met for many years; but,
I am well assured, she has not yet forgotten or forgiven either her
former lover, or the lady whose superior qualities first opened his eyes
to the folly of his boyish attachment.

As for Richard Wilson's sister, she, having been wholly unable to
recapture Mr. Lawrence, or obtain any partner rich and elegant enough to
suit her ideas of what the husband of Jane Wilson ought to be, is yet in
single blessedness. Shortly after the death of her mother she withdrew
the light of her presence from Ryecote Farm, finding it impossible any
longer to endure the rough manners and unsophisticated habits of her
honest brother Robert and his worthy wife, or the idea of being
identified with such vulgar people in the eyes of the world, and took
lodgings in -- the county town, where she lived, and still lives, I
suppose, in a kind of close-fisted, cold, uncomfortable gentility, doing
no good to others, and but little to herself; spending her days in
fancy-work and scandal; referring frequently to her 'brother the vicar,'
and her 'sister, the vicar's lady,' but never to her brother the farmer
and her sister the farmer's wife; see