Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/234

224 As I may never have occasion to mention her again, I may as well tell you here, that she was at this time privately engaged to Richard Wilson—a secret, I believe to every one but their two selves. That worthy student: was now at Cambridge, where his most exemplary conduct and his diligent perseverance in the pursuit of learning carried him safely through, and eventually brought him with hard-earned honours and an untarnished reputation, to the close of his collegiate career. In due time, he became Mr. Millward's first and only curate—for that gentleman's declining years forced him at last to acknowledge that the duties of his extensive parish were a little too much for those vaunted energies which he was wont to boast over his younger and less active brethren of the cloth. This was what the patient, faithful lovers had privately planned, and quietly waited for years ago; and in due time they were united, to the astonishment of the little world they lived in, that had long since declared them both born