He held her in vast respect.
Then Mr.Miller coughed; he had now come to the point of his discourse which made him nervous.
For he had learned beyond the possibility of any doubt that Mrs.
Cricklander was, alas! not a lonely widow but had been divorced--only a year or two ago.

She had divorced her husband--not he her--he hastened to add, and then coughed again and got very red.
"When we were young," Miss La Sarthe remarked severely, "our Mamma would never have allowed us to know any divorced person--and, indeed, our good Queen Victoria would never have received one at her Court.

We cannot possibly call, Roberta." Poor Miss Roberta's face fell.

She had been secretly much elated by the thoughts of a neighbor, and to have all her hopes thus nipped in the bud was painful.

She had heard (from Hester again, it is to be feared!) that Mrs.Cricklander's maid, who was a cousin of the baker in Applewood, and who had originally instigated her discovery of Wendover, had said that her lady knew all the greatest people in England--lords and duchesses by the dozen, and even an archbishop! Surely that was respectable enough.
But Miss La Sarthe, while again deploring the source of her sister's information, was firm.