Godfrey Ablewhite, was associated
with our work of moral and material usefulness. I had expected to see
him in the boardroom, on the Monday evening of which I am now writing,
and had proposed to tell him, when we met, of dear Aunt Verinder's
arrival in London. To my great disappointment he never appeared. On
my expressing a feeling of surprise at his absence, my sisters of the
Committee all looked up together from their trousers (we had a great
pressure of business that night), and asked in amazement, if I had not
heard the news. I acknowledged my ignorance, and was then told, for the
first time, of an event which forms, so to speak, the starting-point
of this narrative. On the previous Friday, two gentlemen--occupying
widely-different positions in society--had been the victims of an
outrage which had startled all London. One of the gentlemen was Mr.
Septimus Luker, of Lambeth. The other was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Living in my present isolation, I have no means of introducing the
newspaper-account of the outrage into my narrative. I was also deprived,
at the time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the events related
by the fervid eloquence of Mr.
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