With this final shaft he departed to see that Jane, the little maid
whom Sarah ordered about, had not, in cleaning the study for the
evening's festivities, put his last sermon into the waste-paper
basket. His wife looked after him with eyes that spoke unutterable
things.

'You would never think,' she said in an agitated voice to Young
Elsmere, 'that I had consulted Mr. Thornburgh as to every invitation,
that he entirely agreed with me that one _must_ be civil to Mrs.
Seaton, considering that she can make anybody's life a burden to
them about here that isn't; but it's no use.'

And she fell back on her knitting with redoubled energy, her face
full of a half-tearful intensity of meaning. Robert Elsmere
restrained a strong inclination to laugh, and set himself instead
to distract and console her. He expressed sympathy with her
difficulties, he talked to her about her party, he got from her the
names and histories of the guests. How Miss Austenish it sounded;
the managing rector's wife, her still more managing old maid of a
sister, the neighboring clergyman who played the flute, the local
doctor, and a pretty daughter just out--'Very pretty' sighed 'Mrs.
Thornburgh, who was now depressed all round, 'but all flounces and
frills and nothing to say'--and last of all those three sisters,
the Leyburns, who seemed to be on a different level, and whom he
had heard mentioned so often since his arrival by both husband and
wife.

'Tell me about the Miss Leyburns,' he said presently. 'You and
cousin William seem to have a great affection for them. Do they
live near?'