Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/25

could out of her. She is called Mrs. Graham, and she is in mourning—not widow's weeds, but slightish mourning—and she is quite young, they say,—not above five or six and twenty,—but so reserved! They tried all they could to find out who she was, and where she came from, and all about her, but neither Mrs. Wilson, with her pertinacious and impertinent home thrusts, nor Miss Wilson, with her skilful manœuvering, could manage to elicit a single satisfactory answer, or even a casual remark, or chance expression calculated to allay their curiosity, or throw the faintest ray of light upon her history, circumstances, or connexions. Moreover, she was barely civil to them, and evidently better pleased to say 'good by,' than 'how do you do.' But Eliza Millward says her father intends to call upon her soon, to offer some pastoral advice, which he fears she needs, as though she is known to have entered the neigbourhood early last week, she did not make her appearance at church on Sunday;