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Strange Story, a — Volume 01 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 34 of 73 (46%)
dear, you ask who has taken it. I will inform you,--a particular friend
of mine."

"Indeed! Dear me!" said Miss Brabazon, looking confused. "I hope I
did not say anything to--"

"Wound my feelings. Not in the least. You said your uncle Sir
Phelim employed a coachmaker named Ashleigh, that Ashleigh was an uncommon
name, though Ashley was a common one; you intimated an appalling suspicion
that the Mrs. Ashleigh who had come to the Hill was the coach maker's
widow. I relieve your mind,--she is not; she is the widow of Gilbert
Ashleigh, of Kirby Hall."

"Gilbert Ashleigh," said one of the guests, a bachelor, whose parents
had reared him for the Church, but who, like poor Goldsmith, did not think
himself good enough for it, a mistake of over-modesty, for he matured into
a very harmless creature. "Gilbert Ashleigh? I was at Oxford with
him,--a gentleman commoner of Christ Church. Good-looking man, very;
sapped--"

"Sapped! what's that?--Oh, studied. That he did all his life. He
married young,--Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls together; married the
same year. They settled at Kirby Hall--nice place, but dull. Poyntz and
I spent a Christmas there. Ashleigh when he talked was charming, but he
talked very little. Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and she
talked very much. Naturally, poor thing,---she was so happy. Poyntz and
I did not spend another Christmas there. Friendship is long, but life is
short. Gilbert Ashleigh's life was short indeed; he died in the seventh
year of his marriage, leaving only one child, a girl. Since then, though
I never spent another Christmas at Kirby Hall, I have frequently spent a
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