The Wingfields as a topic were becoming too much for Framsby. No sooner had the curiosities of Mr. Wingfield’s engagement to the daughter of Farmer Wadhurst been discussed than the news came of that hole-and-corner marriage of the pair. Agriculture was looking up, some people said, while others asserted that it was manorialism that was coming down. There was a feeling of indignation at being cheated out of the marriage; the offence was in their eyes on a level with the promise of a presentation of a stained-glass window to the church and then sending one done on “Glacier” transparent paper. The act, if not absolutely fraudulent, was certainly in very bad taste, a good many people said; but there were others who announced that they were not surprised at that young woman’s desire to avoid publicity being obtained for such an act as her marriage to a second husband before her first had been dead more than two months. These were the people who had invariably referred to Priscilla as Mrs. Blaydon, and pretended not to understand who was meant when anyone spoke of Miss Wadhurst. The right set agreed that the whole affair, from the engagement to the marriage, was disgraceful, and hastened to leave a second relay of cards upon Mrs. Wingfield the elder, and to enquire with a most interesting expression on their faces, if they were fortunate enough to get a word with that lady, when the young couple would be at the Manor, so that they might leave cards upon them as well. It might reasonably have been expected, Framsby thought, that the Wingfields had absorbed enough of the conversation of the community up to this point; but it seemed as if the Wingfields had set themselves up as a perpetual topic; for while the buzz about the marriage was still in the air, there came the news, announced in ridiculously large type under the heading of “The Nuttingford Vacancy,” that the Wingfields were in this business as well. “The Candidature of Mr. Wingfield” soon became the most conspicuous line in every newspaper; and the way even the most respectable London organs lent themselves to this new scheme for pandering to that young woman’s insatiable desire for publicity showed, in the estimation of Mrs. Gifford and her friends, with deplorable emphasis, how depraved was the taste of the readers for whom the newspapers catered.