"I told you I lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual luck--for I never do wrong without gaining by it--I found myself in due time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see.

I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the midst of a retired little village between gently rising hills; a small stream before me to be forded, a church standing on a sort of knoll to my right--which church was strikingly large and handsome for the place, and not a gentleman or half a gentleman's house to be seen excepting one--to be presumed the Parsonage--within a stone's throw of the said knoll and church.

I found myself, in short, in Thornton Lacey." "It sounds like it," said Edmund; "but which way did you turn after passing Sewell's farm ?" "I answer no such irrelevant and insidious questions; though were I to answer all that you could put in the course of an hour, you would never be able to prove that it was _not_ Thornton Lacey--for such it certainly was." "You inquired, then ?" "No, I never inquire.

But I _told_ a man mending a hedge that it was Thornton Lacey, and he agreed to it." "You have a good memory.

I had forgotten having ever told you half so much of the place." Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living, as Miss Crawford well knew; and her interest in a negotiation for William Price's knave increased.
"Well," continued Edmund, "and how did you like what you saw ?" "Very much indeed.