most
unendurable.

Now there came to her one day at luncheon time,--on the day
succeeding that on which Miss French had promised to sacrifice her
chignon,--a certain Mrs. Clifford from Budleigh Salterton, to whom
she was much attached. Perhaps the distance of Budleigh Salterton
from Exeter added somewhat to this affection, so that Mrs. Clifford
was almost closer to our friend's heart even than Mrs. MacHugh, who
lived just at the other end of the cathedral. And in truth Mrs.
Clifford was a woman more serious in her mode of thought than Mrs.
MacHugh, and one who had more in common with Miss Stanbury than that
other lady. Mrs. Clifford had been a Miss Noel of Doddiscombe Leigh,
and she and Miss Stanbury had been engaged to be married at the same
time,--each to a man of fortune. One match had been completed in the
ordinary course of matches. What had been the course of the other we
already know. But the friendship had been maintained on very close
terms. Mrs. MacHugh was a Gallio at heart, anxious chiefly to remove
from herself,--and from her friends also,--all the troubles of life,
and make things smooth and easy. She was one who disregarded great
questions; who cared little or nothing what people said of her; who
considered nothing worth the trouble of a fight;--Epicuri de grege
porca. But there was nothing swinish about Mrs. Clifford of Budleigh
Salterton. She took life thoroughly in earnest. She was a Tory who
sorrowed heartily for her country, believing that it was being
brought to ruin by the counsels of evil men. She prayed daily to
be delivered from dissenters, radicals, and wolves in sheep's
clothing,--by which latter bad name she meant especially a certain
leading politician of the day who had, with the cunning of the
devil, tempted and perverted the virtue of her own political friends.
And she was one who thought that the slightest breath of scandal
on a young woman's name should be stopped at once. An antique,
pure-minded, anxious, self-sacrificing matron was Mrs. Clifford, and
very dear to the heart of Miss Stanbury.

After lunch was over on the day in question Mrs. Clifford got Miss
Stanbury into some closet retirement, and there spoke her mind as
to the things which were being said. It had been asserted in her
presence by Camilla French that she, Camilla, was authorised by Mr.
Gibson to declare that he had never thought of proposing to Dorothy
Stanbury, and that Miss Stanbury had been "labouring under some