that she never added to it either beauty, wit, or talent.

I began these descriptions by saying that Oxney Colne would, of all
places, be the best spot from which a tourist could visit those parts
of Devonshire, but for the fact that he could obtain there none of the
accommodation which tourists require. A brother antiquarian might,
perhaps, in those days have done so, seeing that there was, as I have
said, a spare bedroom at the parsonage. Any intimate friend of Miss Le
Smyrger's might be as fortunate, for she was equally well provided at
Oxney Combe, by which name her house was known. But Miss Le Smyrger
was not given to extensive hospitality, and it was only to those who
were bound to her, either by ties of blood or of very old friendship,
that she delighted to open her doors. As her old friends were very few
in number, as those few lived at a distance, and as her nearest
relations were higher in the world than she was, and were said by
herself to look down upon her, the visits made to Oxney Combe were few
and far between.

But now, at the period of which I am writing, such a visit was about to
be made. Miss Le Smyrger had a younger sister, who had inherited a
property in the parish of Oxney Colne equal to that of the lady who now
lived there; but this the younger sister had inherited beauty also, and
she therefore, in early life, had found sundry lovers, one of whom
became her husband. She had married a man even then well to do in the
world, but now rich and almost mighty; a Member of Parliament, a lord
of this and that board, a man who had a house in Eaton Square, and a
park in the north of England; and in this way her course of life had
been very much divided from that of our Miss Le Smyrger. But the Lord
of the Government Board had been blessed with various children; and
perhaps it was now thought expedient to look after Aunt Penelope's