There was, to be
sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already
mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen,
passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or
disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could
be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks
and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was
punctual in her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable as the
Sphinx. The attendance at church was, of course, set down to "business
considerations," and was held to be quite consistent with the scepticism
and loose morality deducible from the French book and the unground
coffee.
In speaking of the male creatures of the town we have left out Dr.
Midleton. He was forty-eight years old, and had been rector twenty
years. He had obtained high mathematical honours at Cambridge, and
became a tutor in a grammar school, but was soon presented by his
college with the living of Langborough. He was tall, spare, clean-
shaven, grey-eyed, dark-haired, thin-faced, his lips were curved and
compressed, and he stooped slightly.
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