Diana Tempest, Volume II by Mary Cholmondeley

"Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power of loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; their fidelity as resisting as the diamond. " -- AMIEL.

The newspapers arrived at tea-time at Garstone. Every afternoon Mrs. Garstone and Mrs. Courtenay drove out along the straight high-road to D -- -- to fetch the papers and post the letters; four miles in and four miles out; the grey pair one day and the bays the next, in the old yellow chariot. It was the rule of the house. And after tea and rusks, and a poached egg under a cover for Mr. Garstone, that gentleman read the papers aloud in a voice that trembled and halted like the spinnet in the southern parlour.