CHAPTER I.
IF you had been in the far West of England about thirteen years since, and if you had happened to take up one of the Cornish newspapers on a certain day of the month, which need not be specially mentioned, you would have seen this notice of a marriage at the top of a column: On the third instant, at the parish church, the Reverend Alfred Carling, Rector of Penliddy, to Emily Harriet, relict of the late Fergus Duncan, Esq., of Glendarn, N.B.
The rector's marriage did not produce a very favorable impression in the town, solely in consequence of the unaccountable private and unpretending manner in which the ceremony had been performed.

The middle-aged bride and bridegroom had walked quietly to church one morning, had been married by the curate before any one was aware of it, and had embarked immediately afterward in the steamer for Tenby, where they proposed to pass their honeymoon.

The bride being a stranger at Penliddy, all inquiries about her previous history were fruitless, and the townspeople had no alternative but to trust to their own investigations for enlightenment when the rector and his wife came home to settle among their friends.
After six weeks' absence Mr.and Mrs.Carling returned, and the simple story of the rector's courtship and marriage was gathered together in fragments, by inquisitive friends, from his own lips and from the lips of his wife.
Mr.Carling and Mrs.Duncan had met at Torquay.

The rector, who had exchanged houses and duties for the season with a brother clergyman settled at Torquay, had called on Mrs.Duncan in his clerical capacity, and had come away from the interview deeply impressed and interested by the widow's manners and conversation.

The visits were repeated; the acquaintance grew into friendship, and the friendship into love--ardent, devoted love on both sides.
Middle-aged man though he was, this was Mr.Carling's first attachment, and it was met by the same freshness of feeling on the lady's part.