"--"How! Miss
Walton married!" said Harley. "Why, it mayn't be true, sir, for all
that; but Tom's wife told it me, and to be sure the servants told
her, and their master told them, as I guess, sir; but it mayn't be
true for all that, as I said before."--"Have done with your idle
information," said Harley:- "Is my aunt come down into the parlour
to breakfast?"--"Yes, sir."--"Tell her I'll be with her
immediately."
When Peter was gone, he stood with his eyes fixed on the ground, and
the last words of his intelligence vibrating in his ears. "Miss
Walton married!" he sighed--and walked down stairs, with his shoe as
it was, and the buckle in his hand. His aunt, however, was pretty
well accustomed to those appearances of absence; besides, that the
natural gravity of her temper, which was commonly called into
exertion by the care of her household concerns, was such as not
easily to be discomposed by any circumstance of accidental
impropriety. She too had been informed of the intended match
between Sir Harry Benson and Miss Walton. "I have been thinking,"
said she, "that they are distant relations: for the great-
grandfather of this Sir Harry Benson, who was knight of the shire in
the reign of Charles the First, and one of the cavaliers of those
times, was married to a daughter of the Walton family.
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