With a sigh and a
shake of the head at her unreasonableness, Mr. John Short submitted, and
then the carriage came round and they were all driven off to Somerset
House. Presently they were there, and after threading innumerable chilly
passages, reached a dismal room with an almanack, a dirty deal table, and
a few chairs in it, wherein were congregated several solicitors' clerks,
waiting their turn to appear before the Registrar. Here they waited for
half-an-hour or more, to Augusta's considerable discomfort, for she soon
found that she was an object of curiosity and closest attention to the
solicitors' clerks, who never took their eyes off her. Presently she
discovered the reason, for having remarkably quick ears, she overheard
one of the solicitors' clerks, a callow little man with yellow hair and
an enormous diamond pin, whose appearance somehow reminded her of a
new-born chicken, tell another, who was evidently of the Jewish faith,
that she (Augusta) was the respondent in the famous divorce case of Jones
v. Jones, and was going to appear before the Registrar to submit herself
to cross examination in some matter connected with a grant of alimony.
Now, as all London was talking about the alleged iniquities of the Mrs.
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