I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish
downy field, in the midst of a retired little village
between gently rising hills; a small stream before me to
be forded, a church standing on a sort of knoll to my right--
which church was strikingly large and handsome for
the place, and not a gentleman or half a gentleman's house
to be seen excepting one--to be presumed the Parsonage--
within a stone's throw of the said knoll and church.
I found myself, in short, in Thornton Lacey."
"It sounds like it," said Edmund; "but which way did you
turn after passing Sewell's farm?"
"I answer no such irrelevant and insidious questions;
though were I to answer all that you could put in the course
of an hour, you would never be able to prove that it
was _not_ Thornton Lacey--for such it certainly was."
"You inquired, then?"
"No, I never inquire. But I _told_ a man mending a hedge
that it was Thornton Lacey, and he agreed to it."
"You have a good memory. I had forgotten having ever
told you half so much of the place."
Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living,
as Miss Crawford well knew; and her interest in a negotiation
for William Price's knave increased.
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