enough to take out her cigarette-case, light and smoke her miniature cigar. He, who had been talking to her with considerable vivacity up to this moment, suddenly became silent. She turned on him after a while and asked what was the matter with him. "Merely," he replied, "that I consider our engagement must end in smoke." And accordingly it was broken off.
"Good Lord!" said he afterwards, "I was well out of that. A woman who smokes will become a woman who drinks, and I do not want a wife who will begin with whisky and end with cocaine; and, by the way, whisky now is deuced dear."
The "smoking" lady is a spinster still; her former admirer is married to a sensible non-smokeress, water-drinker, and is the happy father of three lusty children, and there is a promise of more, as I am informed in a low voice. The smoking lady has only a pug and a parrot to spoil.
My grandfather had inherited Lew Trenchard from his grandmother, who passed over her son-in-law, Charles Baring, and her daughter, in his favour. Charles Baring held Socinian religious opinions. He built a chapel at Lympston and maintained a preacher there. Finally he and his wife were buried outside the chapel.
Margaret Gould, "Old Madam" as she was called, had lost her husband, William Drake Gould, in 1766, and the estate of Lew as well as that of Staverton had come to her only son, Edward, who was a rake, and lost all the Staverton property except a moiety that had been secured to one Joan Gould, an old maid. He would have sold Lew as well had not his mother taken it out of his power, on a ninety-nine years' lease. Edward died in 1788, and the heiress should have been Margaret Baring; but she could not enjoy the property for ninety years, or thereabout.
On one occasion Old Madam was invited by Charles Baring and his wife, her daughter Margaret, to stay with them at Court-lands, their house near Exmouth. She drove thither, and arrived on the Saturday.
On Sunday morning the carriage of the Barings came to the door, and took Mr. and Mrs. Charles Baring and Madam Gould—not to church, but to the meeting-house. The old lady sat through the service, grim and stony, and would take no part
