HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS The story of Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly guesswork, I admit.

Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in.

Is it not _always_ thus with our friends and acquaintances?
I long to know all about them from their birth (including date and place of birth and parentage) onwards; what the father's profession was and why on earth he married the mother (after I saw the daguerreotype portrait), and how they became possessed of so much money, and why she went back to live with _her_ mother between the birth of her second child and the near advent of her third.

But in how very few cases do we know their whole story, do we even care to know more than is sufficient for our purpose in issuing or accepting invitations?
There are the Dombeys--the Gorings as they're now called, who live near us.

I've seen the tombstone of Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don't know _for a fact_ that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla's son (who was killed in the war).