'Has my aunt been long dead?'
'Twelve or fifteen years—more, indeed—she died before your poor mamma. She was very unhappy, and I am sure would have given her right hand she had never married Silas.'
'Did you like her?'
'No, dear; she was a coarse, vulgar woman.'
'Coarse and vulgar, and Uncle Silas's wife!' I echoed in extreme surprise, for Uncle Silas was a man of fashion—a beau in his day—and might have married women of good birth and fortune, I had no doubt, and so I expressed myself.
'Yes, dear; so he might, and poor dear Austin was very anxious he should, and would have helped him with a handsome settlement, I dare say, but he chose to marry the daughter of a Denbigh innkeeper.'
'How utterly incredible!' I exclaimed.
'Not the least incredible, dear—a kind of thing not at all so uncommon as you fancy.'
'What!—a gentleman of fashion and refinement marry a person—'