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 strange misapprehension in the matter.’  ’Now, my dear, I don’t care very much for the young lady in question,’ said Mrs Clifford, alluding to Camilla French.

‘Very little, indeed, I should think,’ said Miss Stanbury, with a shake of her head.