Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not
sweeter than the discovery when we begin to count the years which are
left to us, and to fear there will be nothing in them better than in
those which preceded them that for us also love is reserved.
Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her work in the afternoon, but
she gave notice that night to leave in a week.
In a couple of months Langborough was astounded at the news of the
Rector's marriage with a Mrs. Leighton whom nobody in Langborough knew.
The advertisement in the Stamford Mercury said that the lady was the
widow of Richard Leighton, Esq., and eldest daughter of the late
Marmaduke Sutton, Esq. Langborough spared no pains to discover who she
was. Mrs. Bingham found out that the Suttons were a Devonshire family,
and she ascertained from an Exeter friend that Mr. Marmaduke Sutton was
the son of an Honourable, and that Mrs. Leighton was consequently a
high-born lady. She had married as her first husband a man who had done
well at Cambridge, but who took to gambling and drink, and treated her
with such brutality that they separated.
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