It was very conciliating and satisfactory to Mr. Plowden that she did not understand. ‘It gives a clue,’ he said. ‘We must look up Gepps. He must have been a friend of my father’s, and he must, of course, be in the “Clergy List.” I have been looking up what old ones I have, but I cannot find him. I have not got that year, but it can be got, it can be got. He was an old man, you say, and he must have died, I suppose, but he cannot have taken his church and his registers with him. We must ascertain what was his church.’ ‘It was a little old-fashioned place, very dingy, with heavy pews; a small place with an old-fashioned pulpit and canopy. I remember the look of it--and the clergyman, an old man, with a white beard.’ ‘In the City, most likely?’ Lady William shook her head. ‘I knew nothing of the City--nor anywhere except the parks and the streets round about that in which the Swinfords had a house. We went seldom, very seldom, to town in those days; I never, except with them.’ ‘It must have been in the City,’ said Mr. Plowden. ‘What you describe settles the question. Well, then, I think now, Emily, there need be very little difficulty. Gepps must be in the “Clergy List.” If he is living, so much the better; he may have retired somewhere. But at all events the register must exist. I will go up to town to-morrow, and find the list for ‘sixty-five, and after that it will be plain sailing. All the same, how my father and you, but especially my father, could be such a fool!’ Lady William made no reply. To have her mind so thrown back upon that wonderful tragic moment of her life: to think of herself, the bewildered romantic girl, with all the wonderful tales poured into her ear by the flatterer by her side--that flatterer who was not the silent, disturbed bridegroom who himself said so little to explain the hot haste, the desperation of the strange wedding--was of itself painful enough and exciting. She had herself broached the subject to her brother when the question opened up by Mrs. Swinford had burst upon her, but she had not then entered into it so fully as now, and her mind was shaken by all those recollections. She seemed to see the shabby old church already, even so long ago, an anachronism among churches, with its heavy pulpit and pews and small round-headed windows, and the old clergyman with his white beard, and the complete absence of all those prettinesses with which a girl’s imagination surrounds her bridal--prettinesses, however, made up for by the thrilling romance which, when the moment came, had begun to yield a little to the natural pain of the position. She remembered with what a start of alarm she had found herself consigned to the husband of whom she knew so little, who was so little like the romantic hero of such a marriage, and who--as she only began to see when the step was irrevocable--showed so little of any sentiment for her which could justify the impetuous impatience of the proceedings. She