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 dull and highly-respectable circle, they had had a martinet father and an invalid mother. Church work occupied the days of their youth. Few visitors called on them except elderly married people that they had known all their lives. The very curates in Pillsborough were married.

Colonel Semaphore, like many retired military men, had had strict principles, and had taught his daughters to be suspicious of everything that looked pleasant. Reading, except of devotional works, had not been encouraged in their home. Neither of the girls had been rebellious or particularly bright. They had tried to do their duty, and had found it monotonous. Seeing little of the world, and having no youthful society, they had grown elderly, prim, and formal without knowing it. Dreaming that their lives were all before them, they had waked up suddenly to find that life is youth, and that youth was over.

When their father had died at an advanced age, they had moved to London, feeling themselves most adventurous in making such a change. Years had hardened Miss Augusta and softened Miss Prudence. The former was the terror of the giddy at Beaconsfield