Alice seemed to be spending a very gratifying afternoon.
My sister Elizabeth's strongest instinct from her early youth has been
the passion inspiring the famous Captain Parklebury Todd, so often
quoted by Alice and Billy: "I do not think I ever knew a character so
given to creating a sensation. Or p'r'aps I should in justice say, to
what, in an Adelphi play, is known as situation." Never has she
gratified her taste in this respect more fully than she did--as I
believe quite accidentally and on the inspiration of these words with
Alice--in taking the evening train to New York with Mr. Goward.
Twenty or thirty people at the station saw them starting away together,
each attempting to avoid recognition, each in the pretence of avoiding
the other, each with excited manners. So that, as both Peggy and
Elizabeth have been born and brought up here; as, during Mr. Goward's
conspicuous absence and silence, during Peggy's illness, and all our
trying uncertainties and hers, in the last weeks, my sister had widely
flung to town talk many tacit insinuations concerning the character of
Mr. Goward's interest in herself; as none of the twenty or thirty
people were mute beyond their kind; and as Elizabeth's nature has never
inspired high neighborly confidence--before night a rumor had spread
like the wind that Margaret Talbert's lover had eloped with her aunt.
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