Middlemarch vocabulary

I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship,

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1813)

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“Mr. Rolf asked me to have dinner at the rectory.” Adam wiped his razor on a folded piece of toilet paper. “That’s nice,” he said.

John Steinbeck. East of Eden, p.487 (1952)