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 ‘So much the worse for you. I think that parson who unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact—of your want of firmness. Decrepit families postulate decrepit wills, decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the exhausted seedling of an effete aristocracy!’

‘Lots o’ families are as bad as mine in that! Retty’s family were once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billet’s. And the Debby-houses, who now be carters, were once the De Bayeux family. You find such as I everywhere; ’tis a feature of our county, and I can’t help it.’

‘So much the worse for the county.’

She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and to all else she was indifferent.

They wandered on again in silence. It was said afterwards that a cottager of Wellbridge,