I
knew I should. Nothing ever escapes me. And pray, Maria, what do
you think of her now."
"Think of whom?"
"You are so dull when you won't hear. Of your sister-in-law, Christian
Grey."
Poor Aunt Maria looked up with a helpless pretense of ignorance.
"What about her. Henrietta, dear?"
"Pshaw! You know as well as I do, only you are so obtuse, or so
meek," (A mercy she was, or she would never have lived a week, not to
say twenty years, with Henrietta Gascoigne.) "Once for all, tell me
what you propose doing?"
"Doing? I?"
"Yes, you. Can't you see, my dear Maria, that it is your business to
inform your brother what you have discovered concerning his wife?"
"Discovered?"
"Certainly; it is a discovery, since she has never told it--never told her
husband that before her marriage she had been in the habit of singing
duets (love-songs, no doubt, most improper for any young woman)
with a young gentleman of Sir Edwin's birth and position, who, of
course, never thought of marrying her--(your brother, I do believe, is
the only man in Avonsbridge who would have so committed himself)--
and who, by the light way he speaks of her, evidently shows how little
respect he had for her."
"Perhaps," mildly suggested Aunt Maria, "perhaps she really has told
dear Arnold.
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