_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?