walk--the little watering-place called Broadstairs. "Oh no, Mrs.
Woodville! cried the irrepressible woman, calling me by my name,
as usual; "nothing like so near as you think!"

I looked with a beating heart at the old lady.

To my unutterable amazement, not the faintest gleam of
recognition appeared in her face. Old Mrs. Woodville went on
talking to young Mrs. Woodville just as composedly as if she had
never heard her own name before in her life!

My face and manner must have betrayed something of the agitation
that I was suffering. Happening to look at me at the end of her
next sentence, the old lady started, and said, in her kindly way,

"I am afraid you have overexerted yourself. You are very
pale--you are looking quite exhausted. Come and sit down here;
let me lend you my smelling-bottle."

I followed her, quite helplessly, to the base of the cliff. Some
fallen fragments of chalk offered us a seat. I vaguely heard the
voluble landlady's expressions of sympathy and regret; I
mechanically took the smelling-bottle which my husband's mother
offered to me, after hearing my name, as an act of kindness to a
stranger

If I had only had myself to think of, I believe I should have
provoked an explanation on the spot. But I had Eustace to think
of. I was entirely ignorant of the relations, hostile or
friendly, which existed between his mother and himself. What