Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (page 4)

‘But Roger,’ said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to cry in vexation, ‘what shall I do with the man? How shall I get him out of the house?’

‘Put him under the pump,’ said the baronet; and he laughed his peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which brandy had made in his throat.

‘That’s nonsense, Roger; you know I can’t put him under the pump. Now you are ill, and you’d better see him just for five minutes. I’ll make it right with Dr Thorne.’

‘I’ll be d—- if I do, my lady.’ All the people about Boxall Hill called poor Lady Scatcherd ‘my lady’ as if there was some excellent joke in it; and, so, indeed, there was.

‘You know you needn’t mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he sends: and I’ll tell him not to come no more. Now do ‘ee see him, Roger.’

But there was not coaxing Roger over now, indeed ever: he was a wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always though never a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy to coax over.

‘You go down and tell him I don’t want him, and won’t see him, and that’s an end of it. If he chose to earn his money, why didn’t he come yesterday when he was sent for? I’m well now, and don’t want him; and what’s more, I won’t have him. Winterbones, lock the door.’

So Winterbones, who during this interview had been at work at his little table, got up to lock the door, and Lady Scatcherd had no alternative but to pass through it before the last edict was obeyed.

Lady Scatcherd, with slow step, went downstairs and again sought counsel with Hannah, and the two, putting their heads together, agreed that the only cure for the present evil was to found in a good fee. So Lady Scatcherd, with a five-pound note in her hand, and trembling in every limb, went forth to encounter the august presence of Dr Fillgrave.

As the door opened, Dr Fillgrave dropped the bell-rope which was in his hand, and bowed low to the lady. Those who knew the doctor well, would have known from his bow that he was not well pleased; it was as much as though he said, ‘Lady Scatcherd, I am your most obedient servant; at any rate it appears that it is your pleasure to treat me as such.’

Lady Scatcherd did not understand all this; but she perceived at once that he was angry.

‘I hope Sir Roger does not find himself worse,’ said the doctor. ‘The morning is getting on; shall I step up and see him?’

‘Hem! ha! oh! Why, you see, Dr Fillgrave, Sir Roger finds hisself vastly better this morning, vastly so.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it; but as the morning is getting on, shall I step up to see Sir Roger?’

‘Why, Dr Fillgrave, sir, you see, he finds hisself so much hisself this morning, that he a’most thinks it would be a shame to trouble you.’

‘A shame to trouble me!’ This was the sort of shame which Dr Fillgrave did not at all comprehend. ‘A shame to trouble me! Why Lady Scatcherd–‘

Lady Scatcherd saw that she had nothing for it but to make the whole matter intelligible. Moreover, seeing that she appreciated more thoroughly the smallness of Dr Fillgrave’s person more thoroughly than she did the peculiar greatness of his demeanour, she began to be a shade less afraid of him than she had thought she should have been.

‘Yes, Dr Fillgrave; you see, when a man like he gets well, he can’t abide the idea of doctors: now, yesterday, he was all for sending for you; but to-day he comes to hisself, and don’t seem to want no doctor at all.’

Then did Dr Fillgrave seem to grow out of his boots, so suddenly did he take upon himself sundry modes of expansive attitude;–to grow out of his boots and to swell upwards, till his angry eyes almost looked down on Lady Scatcherd, and each erect hair bristled up towards the heavens.

‘This is very singular, very singular, Lady Scatcherd; very singular indeed; very singular; quite unusual. I have come here from Barchester, at some considerable inconvenience, at some very considerable inconvenience, I may say, to my regular patients; and–and–and–I don’t know that anything so very singular ever occurred to me before.’ And then Dr Fillgrave, with a compression of his lips which almost made the poor woman sink into the ground, moved towards the door.

Then Lady Scatcherd bethought of her great panacea. ‘It isn’t about the money, you know, doctor,’ said she; ‘of course Sir Roger don’t expect you to come here with post-horses for nothing.’ In this, by the by, Lady Scatcherd did not stick quite close to veracity, for Sir Roger, had he known it, would by no means have assented to any payment; and the note which her ladyship held in her hand was taken from her own private purse. ‘It ain’t about the money, doctor;’ and then she tendered the bank-note, which she thought would immediately make all things smooth.

Now Dr Fillgrave dearly loved a five-pound fee. What physician is so unnatural as not to love it? He dearly loved a five-pound fee; but he loved his dignity better. He was angry also; and like all angry men, he loved his grievance. He felt that he had been badly treated; but if he took the money he would throw away his right to indulge in any such feeling. At that moment his outraged dignity and cherished anger were worth more than a five-pound note. He looked at it with wishful but still averted eyes, and then sternly refused the tender.

‘No, madam,’ said he; ‘no, no;’ and with his right hand raised with his eye-glasses in it, he motioned away the tempting paper. ‘No; I should have been happy to have given Sir Roger the benefit of any medical skill I may have, seeing that I was specially called in–‘

‘But, doctor; if the man’s well, you know–‘

‘Oh, of course; if he’s well, and does not choose to see me, there’s an end of it. Should he have any relapse, as my time is valuable, he will perhaps oblige me by sending elsewhere. Madam, good morning. I will, if you will allow me, ring for my carriage–that is, post-chaise.’

‘But, doctor, you’ll take the money; you must take the money; indeed you’ll take the money,’ said Lady Scatcherd, who had now become really unhappy at the idea of her husband’s unpardonable whim had brought this man with post-horses all the way from Barchester, and that he was to be paid nothing for his time or costs.

‘No, madam, no. I could not think of it. Sir Roger, I have no doubt, will know better another time. It is not a question of money; not at all.’

‘But it is a question of money, doctor; and you really shall, you must.’ And poor Lady Scatcherd, in her anxiety to acquit herself at any rate of any pecuniary debt to the doctor, came to personal close quarters with him, with a view of forcing the note into his hands.

‘Quite impossible, quite impossible,’ said the doctor, still cherishing his grievance, and valiantly rejecting the root of all evil. ‘I shall not do anything of the kind, Lady Scatcherd.’

‘Now doctor, do ‘ee; to oblige me.’

‘Quite out of the question.’ And so, with his hands and hat behind his back, in token of his utter refusal to accept any pecuniary accommodation of his injury, he made his way backwards to the door, her ladyship perseveringly pressing him in front. So eager had been the attack on him, that he had not waited to give his order about the post-chaise, but made his way at once towards the hall.

‘Now, do ‘ee take it, do ‘ee,’ pressed Lady Scatcherd.

‘Utterly out of the question,’ said Dr Fillgrave, with great deliberation, as he backed his way into the hall. As he did so, of course he turned round,–and he found himself almost in the arms of Dr Thorne.

As Burley might have glared at Bothwell when they rushed together in the dread encounter on the mountain side; as Achilles may have glared at Hector when at last they met, each resolved to test in fatal conflict the prowess of the other, so did Dr Fillgrave glare at his foe from Greshamsbury, when, on turning round on his exalted heel, he found his nose on a level with the top button of Dr Thorne’s waistcoat.

And here, if it be not too tedious, let us pause a while to recapitulate and add up the undoubted grievances of the Barchester practitioner. He had made no effort to ingratiate himself into the sheepfold of that other shepherd-dog; it was not by his seeking that he was not at Boxall Hill; much as he hated Dr Thorne, full sure as he felt of that man’s utter ignorance, of his incapacity to administer properly even a black dose, of his murdering propensities and his low, mean, unprofessional style of practice; nevertheless, he had done nothing to undermine him with these Scatcherds. Dr Thorne might have sent every mother’s son at Boxall Hill to his long account, and Dr Fillgrave would not have interfered;–would not have interfered unless specially and duly called upon to do so.

But he had been and duly called on. Before such a step was taken some words must undoubtedly have passed on the subject between Thorne and Scatcherds. Thorne must have known what was to be done. Having been so called, Dr Fillgrave had come–had come all the way in a post-chaise–had been refused admittance to the sick man’s room, on the plea that the sick man was no longer sick; and just as he was about to retire fee-less–for the want of the fee was not the less a grievance from the fact of its having been tendered and refused–feeless, dishonoured, and in dudgeon, he encountered this other doctor–this very rival whom he had been sent to supplant; he encountered him in the very act of going to the sick man’s room.

What mad fanatic Burley, what god-succoured insolent Achilles, ever had such cause to swell with wrath as at that moment had Dr Fillgrave? Had I the pen of Moliere, I could fitly tell of such medical anger, but with no other pen can it be fitly told. He did swell, and when the huge bulk of his wrath was added to his natural proportions, he loomed gigantic before the eyes of the surrounding followers of Sir Roger.

Dr Thorne stepped back three steps and took his hat from his head, having, in the passage from the hall-door to the dining-room, hitherto omitted to do so. It must be borne in mind that he had no conception whatever that Sir Roger had declined to see the physician for whom he had sent; none whatever that the physician was now about to return, feeless, to Barchester.

Dr Thorne and Dr Fillgrave were doubtless well-known enemies. All the world of Barchester, and all that portion of the world of London which is concerned with the lancet and the scalping-knife, were well aware of this: they were continually writing against each other; continually speaking against each other; but yet they had never hitherto come to that positive personal collision which is held to justify a cut direct. They very rarely saw each other; and when they did meet, it was in some casual way in the streets of Barchester or elsewhere, and on such occasions their habit had been to bow with very cold propriety.

On the present occasion, Dr Thorne of course felt that Dr Fillgrave had the whip-hand of him; and, with a sort of manly feeling on such a point, he conceived it to be most compatible with his own dignity to show, under such circumstances, more than his usual courtesy–something, perhaps, amounting almost to cordiality. He had been supplanted, quoad doctor, in the house of this rich, eccentric, railway baronet, and he would show that he bore no malice on that account.

So he smiled blandly as he took off his hat, and in a civil speech he expressed a hope that Dr Fillgrave had not found his patient to be in any very unfavourable state.

Here was an aggravation to the already lacerated feelings of the injured man. He had been brought thither to be scoffed at and scorned at, that he might be a laughing-stock to his enemies, and food for mirth to the vile-minded. He swelled with noble anger till he would have burst, had it not been for the opportune padding of his frock-coat.

‘Sir,’ said he; ‘sir:’ and he could hardly get his lips open to give vent to the tumult of his heart. Perhaps he was not wrong; for it may be that his lips were more eloquent than would have been his words.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Dr Thorne, opening his eyes wide, and addressing Lady Scatcherd over his head and across the hairs of the irritated man below him. ‘What on earth is the matter? Is anything wrong with Sir Roger?’

‘Oh, laws, doctor!’ said her ladyship. ‘Oh, laws; I’m sure it ain’t my fault. Here’s Dr Fillgrave, in a taking, and I’m quite ready to pay him–quite. If a man gets paid, what more can he want?’ And she again held out the five-pound note over Dr Fillgrave’s head.

What more, indeed, Lady Scatcherd, can any of us want, if only we could keep our tempers and feelings a little in abeyance? Dr Fillgrave, however, could not so keep his; and, therefore, he did want something more, though at the present moment he could hardly have said what.

Lady Scatcherd’s courage was somewhat resuscitated by the presence of her ancient trusty ally; and, moreover, she began to conceive that the little man before her was unreasonable beyond all conscience with his anger, seeing that that for which he was ready to work had been offered him without any work at all.

‘Madam,’ said he, again turning round at Lady Scatcherd, ‘I was never before treated in such a way in any house in Barchester–never–never.’

‘Good heavens, Dr Fillgrave!’ said he of Greshamsbury, ‘what is the matter?’

‘I’ll let you know what is the matter, sir,’ said he, turning round again as quickly as before. ‘I’ll let you know what is the matter. I’ll publish this, sir, to the medical world;’ and as he shrieked out the words of the threat, he stood on tiptoes and brandished his eye-glasses up almost into his enemy’s face.

‘Don’t be angry with Dr Thorne,’ said Lady Scatcherd. ‘Any ways, you needn’t be angry with him. If you must be angry with anybody–‘

‘I shall be angry with him, madam,’ ejaculated Dr Fillgrave, making another sudden demi-pirouette. ‘I am angry with him–or, rather, I despise him;’ and completing the circle, Dr Fillgrave again brought himself round in full front of his foe.

Dr Thorne raised his eyebrows and looked inquiringly at Lady Scatcherd; but there was a quiet sarcastic motion round his mouth which by no means had the effect of throwing oil on the troubled waters.

‘I’ll publish the whole of this transaction to the medical world, Dr Thorne–the whole of it; and if that has not the effect of rescuing the people of Greshamsbury out of your hands, then–then–then, I don’t know what will. Is my carriage–that is, the post-chaise there?’ and Dr Fillgrave, speaking very loudly, turned majestically to one of the servants.

‘What have I done to you, Dr Fillgrave,’ said Dr Thorne, now absolutely laughing, ‘that you should determined to take the bread out of my mouth? I am not interfering with your patient. I have come here simply with reference to money matters appertaining to Sir Roger.’

‘Money matters! Very well–very well; money matters. That is your idea of medical practice. Very well–very well. Is my post-chaise at the door? I’ll publish it all to the medical world–every word–every word of it, every word of it.’

‘Publish what, you unreasonable man?’

‘Man! sir; whom do you call a man? I’ll let you know whether I’m a man–post-chaise there!’

‘Don’t ‘ee call him names now, doctor; don’t ‘ee pray don’t ‘ee,’ said Lady Scatcherd.

By this time they had all got somewhere nearer the hall-door; but the Scatcherd retainers were too fond of the row to absent themselves willingly at Dr Fillgrave’s bidding, and it did not appear that any one went in search of the post-chaise.

‘Man! sir; I’ll let you know what it is to speak to me in that style. I think, sir, you hardly know who I am.’

‘All that I know of you at present is, that you are my friend Sir Roger’s physician, and I cannot conceive what has occurred to make you so angry.’ And as he spoke, Dr Thorne looked carefully at him to see whether that pump-discipline had in truth been applied. There were no signs whatever that cold water had been thrown upon Dr Fillgrave.

‘My post-chaise–is my post-chaise there? The medical world shall know all; you may be sure, sir, the medical world shall know it all;’ and thus, ordering his post-chaise and threatening Dr Thorne with the medical world, Dr Fillgrave made his way to the door.

But the moment he put on his hat he returned. ‘No, madam,’ said he. ‘No; quite out of the question: such an affair is not to be arranged by such means. I’ll publish it all to the medical world–post-chaise there!’ and then, using all his force, he flung as far as he could into the hall a light bit of paper. It fell at Dr Thorne’s feet, who, raising it, found that it was a five-pound note.

‘I put it into his hat just while he was in his tantrum,’ said Lady Scatcherd. ‘And I thought that perhaps he would not find it till he got to Barchester. Well I wish he’d been paid, certainly, although Sir Roger wouldn’t see him;’ and in this manner Dr Thorne got some glimpse of understanding into the cause of the great offence.

‘I wonder whether Sir Roger will see me,’ said he, laughing.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TWO UNCLES

‘Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed Sir Roger, lustily, as Dr Thorne entered the room. ‘Well, if that ain’t rich, I don’t know what is. Ha! ha! ha! But why didn’t they put him under the pump, doctor?’

The doctor, however, had too much tact, and too many things of importance to say, to allow of his giving up much time to the discussion of Dr Fillgrave’s wrath. He had come determined to open the baronet’s eyes as to what would be the real effect of his will, and he had also to negotiate a loan for Mr Gresham, if that might be possible. Dr Thorne therefore began about the loan, that being the easier subject, and found that Sir Roger was quite clear-headed as to his many money concerns, in spite of his illness. Sir Roger was willing enough to lend Mr Gresham more money–six, eight, ten, twenty thousand; but then, in doing so, he should insist on possession of the title-deeds.

‘What! the title-deeds of Greshamsbury for a few thousand pounds?’ said the doctor.

‘I don’t know whether you call ninety thousand pounds a few thousands; but the debt will about amount to that.’

‘Ah! that’s the old debt.’

‘Old and new together, of course; every shilling I lend more weakens my security for what I have lent before.’

‘But you have the first claim, Sir Roger.’

‘It ought to be first and last to cover such a debt as that. If he wants further accommodation, he must part with his deeds, doctor.’

The point was argued backwards and forwards for some time without avail, and the doctor then thought it well to introduce the other subject.

‘Sir Roger, you’re a hard man.’

‘No I ain’t,’ said Sir Roger; ‘not a bit hard; that is, not a bit too hard. Money is always hard. I know I found it hard to come by; and there is no reason why Squire Gresham should expect to find me so very soft.’

‘Very well; there is an end of that. I thought you would have done as much to oblige me, that is all.’

‘What! take bad security too oblige you?’

‘Well, there’s an end of that.’

‘I’ll tell you what; I’ll do as much to oblige a friend as any one. I’ll lend you five thousand pounds, you yourself, without security at all, if you want it.’

‘But you know I don’t want it; or, at any rate, shan’t take it.’

‘But to ask me to go on lending money to a third party, and he over head and ears in debt, by way of obliging you, why, it’s a little too much.’

‘Well, there’s and end of it. Now I’ve something to say to you about that will of yours.’

‘Oh! that’s settled.’

‘No, Scatcherd; it isn’t settled. It must be a great deal more settled before we have done with it, as you’ll find when you hear what I have to tell you.’

‘What you have to tell me!’ said Sir Roger, sitting up in bed; ‘and what have you to tell me?’

‘Your will says you sister’s eldest child.’

‘Yes; but that’s only in the event of Louis Philippe dying before he is twenty-five.’

‘Exactly; and now I know something about your sister’s eldest child, and, therefore, I have come to tell you.’

‘You know something about Mary’s eldest child?’

‘I do, Scatcherd; it is a strange story, and maybe it will make you angry. I cannot help it if it does so. I should not tell you this if I could avoid it; but as I do tell you, for your sake, as you will see, and not for my own, I must implore you not to tell my secret to others.’

Sir Roger now looked at him with an altered countenance. There was something in his voice of the authoritative tone of other days, something in the doctor’s look which had on the baronet the same effect which in former days it had sometimes had on the stone-mason.

‘Can you give me a promise, Scatcherd, that what I am about to tell you shall not be repeated?’

‘A promise! Well, I don’t know what it’s about, you know. I don’t like promises in the dark.’

‘Then I must leave it to your honour; for what I have to say must be said. You remember my brother, Scatcherd?’

Remember his brother! thought the rich man to himself. The name of the doctor’s brother had not been alluded to between them since the days of that trial; but still it was impossible but that Scatcherd should well remember him.

‘Yes, yes; certainly. I remember your brother,’ said he. ‘I remember him well; there’s no doubt about that.’

‘Well, Scatcherd,’ and, as he spoke, the doctor laid his hand with kindness on the other’s arm. ‘Mary’s eldest child was my brother’s child as well.

‘But there is no such child living,’ said Sir Roger; and, in his violence, as he spoke he threw from off him the bedclothes, and tried to stand up on the floor. He found, however, that he had no strength for such an effort, and was obliged to remain leaning on the bed and resting on the doctor’s arm.

‘There was no such child ever lived,’ said he. ‘What do you mean by this?’

Dr Thorne would say nothing further till he had got the man into bed again. This he at last affected, and then he went on with the story in his own way.

‘Yes, Scatcherd, that child is alive; and for fear that you should unintentionally make her your heir, I have thought it right to tell you this.’

‘A girl, is it?’

‘Yes, a girl.’

‘And why should you want to spite her? If she is Mary’s child, she is your brother’s child also. If she is my niece, she must be your niece also. Why should you want to spite her? Why should you try to do her such a terrible injury?’

‘I do not want to spite her.’

‘Where is she? Who is she? What is she called? Where does she live?’

The doctor did not at once answer all these questions. He had made up his mind that he would tell Sir Roger that this child was living, but he had not as yet resolved to make known all the circumstances of her history. He was not even yet quite aware whether it would be necessary to say that this foundling orphan was the cherished darling of his own house.

‘Such a child, is, at any rate, living,’ said he; ‘of that I give you my assurance; and under your will, as now worded, it might come to pass that that child should be your heir. I do not want to spite her, but I should be wrong to let you make your will without such knowledge, seeing that I am in possession of it myself.’

‘But where is the girl?’

‘I do not know that that signifies.’

‘Signifies! Yes; it does signify, a great deal. But, Thorne, Thorne, now that I remember it, now that I can think of things, it was–was it not you yourself who told me that the baby did not live?’

‘Very possibly.’

‘And was it a lie that you told me?’

‘If so, yes. But it is no lie that I tell you now.’

‘I believed you then, Thorne; then, when I was a poor, broken-down day-labourer, lying in jail, rotting there; but I tell you fairly, I do not believe you now. You have some scheme in this.’

‘Whatever scheme I may have, you can frustrate by making another will. What can I gain by telling you this? I only do so to induce you to be more explicit in naming your heir.’

They both remained silent for a while, during which the baronet poured out from his hidden resource a glass of brandy and swallowed it.

‘When a man is taken aback suddenly by such tidings as these, he must take a drop of something, eh, doctor?’

Dr Thorne did not see the necessity; but the present, he felt, was no time for arguing the point.

‘Come, Thorne, where is the girl? You must tell me that. She is my niece, and I have a right to know. She shall come here, and I will do something for her. By the Lord! I would as soon she had the money as anyone else, if she’s anything of a good ‘un;–some of it, that is. Is she a good ‘un?’

‘Good!’ said the doctor, turning away his face. ‘Yes; she is good enough.’

‘She must be grown up by now. None of your light skirts, eh?’

‘She is a good girl,’ said the doctor somewhat loudly and sternly. He could hardly trust himself to say much on this point.

‘Mary was a good girl, a very good girl, till’–and Sir Roger raised himself up in his bed with his fist clenched, as though he were again about to strike that fatal blow at the farm-yard gate. ‘But come, it’s no good thinking of that; you behaved well and manly, always. And so poor Mary’s child is alive; at least, you say so.’

‘I say so, and you may believe it. Why should I deceive you?’

‘No, no; I don’t see why. But then why did you deceive me before?’

To this the doctor chose to make no answer, and again there was silence for a while.

‘What do you call her, doctor?’

‘Her name is Mary.’

‘The prettiest women’s name going; there’s no name like it,’ said the contractor, with an unusual tenderness in his voice. ‘Mary–yes; but Mary what? What other name does she go by?’

Here the doctor hesitated.

‘Mary Scatcherd–eh?’

‘No. Not Mary Scatcherd.’

‘Not Mary Scatcherd! Mary what, then? you, with your d—- pride, wouldn’t let her be called Mary Thorne, I know.’

This was too much for the doctor. He felt that there were tears in his eyes, so he walked away to the window to dry them, unseen. He had fifty names, each more sacred than the other, the most sacred of them all would hardly have been good enough for her.

‘Mary what, doctor? Come, if the girl is to belong to me, if I am to provide for her, I must know what to call her, and where to look for her.’

‘Who talked of your providing for her?’ said the doctor, turning round at the rival uncle. ‘Who said that she was to belong to you? She will be no burden to you; you are only told of this that you may not leave your money to her without knowing it. She is provided for–that is, she wants nothing; she will do well enough; you need not trouble yourself about her.’

‘But is she’s Mary’s child, Mary’s child in real truth, I will trouble myself about her. Who else should do so? For the matter of that, I’d soon say her as any of those others in America. What do I care about blood? I shan’t mind her being a bastard. That is to say, of course, if she’s decently good. Did she ever get any kind of teaching; book-learning, or anything of that sort?’

Dr Thorne at this moment hated his friend the baronet with almost a deadly hatred; that he, rough brute as he was–for he was a rough brute–that he should speak in such language of the angel who gave to that home in Greshamsbury so many of the joys of Paradise–that he should speak of her as in some degree his own, that he should inquire doubtingly as to her attributes and her virtues. And then the doctor thought of her Italian and French readings, of her music, of her nice books, and sweet lady ways, of her happy companionship with Patience Oriel, and her dear, bosom friendship with Beatrice Gresham. He thought of her grace, and winning manners, and soft, polished feminine beauty; and, as he did so, he hated Sir Roger Scatcherd, and regarded him with loathing, as he might have regarded a wallowing-hog.

At last a light seemed to break in upon Sir Roger’s mind. Dr Thorne, he perceived, did not answer his last question. He perceived, also, that the doctor was affected with some more than ordinary emotion. Why should it be that this subject of Mary Scatcherd’s child moved him so deeply? Sir Roger had never been at the doctor’s house at Greshamsbury, had never seen Mary Thorne, but he had heard that there lived with the doctor some young female relative; and thus a glimmering light seemed to come in upon Sir Roger’s bed.

He had twitted the doctor with his pride; had said that it was impossible that the girl should be called Mary Thorne. What if she were so called? What if she were now warming herself at the doctor’s hearth?

‘Well, come, Thorne, what is it you call her? Tell it out, man. And, look you, if it’s your name she bears, I shall think more of you, a deal more than ever I did yet. Come, Thorne, I’m her uncle too. I have a right to know. She is Mary Thorne, isn’t she?’

The doctor had not the hardihood nor the resolution to deny it. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘that is her name; she lives with me.’

‘Yes, and lives with all those grand folks at Greshamsbury too. I have heard of that.’

‘She lives with me, and belongs to me, and is as my daughter.’

‘She shall come over here. Lady Scatcherd shall have her to stay with her. She shall come to us. And as for my will, I’ll make another. I’ll–‘

‘Yes, make another will–or else alter that one. But as to Miss Thorne coming here–‘

‘What! Mary–‘

‘Well, Mary. As to Mary Thorne coming here, that I fear will not be possible. She cannot have two homes. She has cast her lot with one of her uncles, and she must remain with him now.’

‘Do you mean to say that she must have any relation but one?’

‘But one such as I am. She would not be happy over here. She does not like new faces. You have enough depending on you; I have but her.’

‘Enough! why, I have only Louis Philippe. I could provide for a dozen girls.’

‘Well, well, well, we will not talk about that.’

‘Ah! but, Thorne, you have told me of this girl now, and I cannot but talk of her. If you wished to keep the matter dark, you should have said nothing about it. She is my niece as much as yours. And, Thorne, I loved my sister Mary quite as well as you loved your brother; quite as well.’

Any one who might have heard and seen the contractor would have hardly thought him to be the same man who, a few hours before, was urging that the Barchester physician should be put under the pump.

‘You have your son, Scatcherd. I have no one but that girl.’

‘I don’t want to take her from you. I don’t want to take her; but surely there can be no harm in her coming here to see us? I can provide for her, Thorne, remember that. I can provide for her without reference to Louis Philippe. What are ten or fifteen thousand pounds to me? Remember that, Thorne.’

Dr Thorne did remember it. In that interview he remembered many things, and much passed through his mind on which he felt himself compelled to resolve somewhat too suddenly. Would he be justified in rejecting, on behalf of Mary, the offer of pecuniary provision which this rich relative would be so well inclined to make? Or, if he accepted it, would he in truth be studying her interests? Scatcherd was a self-willed, obstinate man–now indeed touched by unwonted tenderness; but he was one to whose lasting tenderness Dr Thorne would be very unwilling to trust his darling. He did resolve, that on the whole he should best discharge his duty, even to her, by keeping her to himself, and rejecting, on her behalf, any participation in the baronet’s wealth. As Mary herself had said, ‘some people must be bound together;’ and their destiny, that of himself and his niece, seemed to have so bound them. She had found her place at Greshamsbury, her place in the world; and it would be better for her now to keep it, than to go forth and seek another that would be richer, but at the same time less suited to her.

‘No, Scatcherd,’ he said at last, ‘she cannot come here; she would not be happy here, and, to tell the truth I do not wish her to know that she has other relatives.’

‘Ah! she would be ashamed of her mother, you mean, and of her mother’s brother too, eh? She’s too fine a lady, I suppose, to take me by the hand and give me a kiss, and call me her uncle? I and Lady Scatcherd would not be grand enough for her, eh?’

‘You may say what you please, Scatcherd: I of course cannot stop you.’

‘But I don’t know how you’ll reconcile what you are doing with your conscience. What right can you have to throw away the girl’s chance, now that she has a chance? What fortune can you give her?’

‘I have done what little I could,’ said Thorne, proudly.

‘Well, well, well, well, I never heard such a thing in my life; never. Mary’s child, my own Mary’s child, and I’m not to see her! But, Thorne, I tell you what; I will see her. I’ll go over to her, I’ll go to Greshamsbury, and tell her who I am, and what I can do for her. I tell you fairly I will. You shall not keep her away from those who belong to her, and can do her a good turn. Mary’s daughter; another Mary Scatcherd! I almost wish she were called Mary Scatcherd. Is she like her, Thorne? Come tell me that; is she like her mother.’

‘I do not remember her mother; at least not in health.’

‘Not remember her! ah, well. She was the handsomest girl in Barchester, anyhow. That was given up to her. Well, I didn’t think to be talking of her again. Thorne, you cannot but expect that I shall go over and see Mary’s child?’

‘Now, Scatcherd, look here,’ and the doctor, coming away from the window, where he had been standing, sat himself down by the bedside, ‘you must not come over to Greshamsbury.’

‘Oh! but I shall.’

‘Listen to me, Scatcherd. I do not want to praise myself in any way; but when that girl was an infant, six months old, she was like to be a thorough obstacle to her mother’s fortune in life. Tomlinson was willing to marry your sister, but he would not marry the child too. Then I took the baby, and I promised her mother that I would be to her as a father. I have kept my word as fairly as I have been able. She has sat at my hearth, and drunk of my cup, and been to me as my own child. After that, I have the right to judge what is best for her. Her life is not like your life, and her ways are not as your ways–‘

‘Ah, that is just it; we are too vulgar for her.’

‘You may take it as you will,’ said the doctor, who was too much in earnest to be in the least afraid of offending his companion. ‘I have not said so; but I do say that you and she are unlike in the way of living.’

‘She wouldn’t like an uncle with a brandy bottle under his head, eh?’

‘You could not see her without letting her know what is the connexion between you; of that I wish to keep her in ignorance.’

‘I never knew any one yet who is ashamed of a rich connexion. How do you mean to get a husband for her, eh?’

‘I have told you of her existence,’ continued the doctor, not appearing to notice what the baronet had last said, ‘because I found it necessary that you should know the fact of your sister having left a child behind her; you would otherwise have made a will different from that intended, and there might have been a lawsuit, and mischief, and misery when we are gone. You must perceive that I have done this in honesty to you; and you yourself are too honest to repay me by taking advantage of this knowledge to make me unhappy.’

‘Oh, very well, doctor. At any rate, you are a brick, I will say that. But I’ll think of this, I’ll think of it; but it does startle me to find that poor Mary has a child living so near to me.’

‘And now, Scatcherd, I will say good-bye. We part as friends, don’t we?’

‘Oh, but doctor, you ain’t going to leave me so. What am I to do? What doses shall I take? How much brandy may I drink? May I have a grill for dinner? D—- me, doctor, you have turned Fillgrave out of the house. You mustn’t go and desert me.’

Dr Thorne laughed, and then, sitting himself down to write medically, gave such prescriptions and ordinances as he found to be necessary. They announced but to this: that the man was to drink, if possible, no brandy; and if that were not possible, then as little as might be.

This having been done, the doctor again proceeded to take his leave; but when he got to the door he was called back. ‘Thorne! Thorne! About that money for Mr Gresham; do what you like, do just what you like. Ten thousand is it? Well, he shall have it. I’ll make Winterbones write about it at once. Five per cent., isn’t it? No, four and a half. Well, he shall have ten thousand more.’

‘Thank you, Scatcherd, thank you, I am really very much obliged to you, I am indeed. I wouldn’t ask it if I was not sure your money is safe. Good-bye, old fellow, and get rid of that bedfellow of yours,’ and again he was at the door.

‘Thorne,’ said Sir Roger once more. ‘Thorne, just come back for a minute. You wouldn’t let me send a present would you–fifty pounds or so,–just to buy a few flounces?’

The doctor contrived to escape without giving a definite answer to this question; and then, having paid his compliments to Lady Scatcherd, remounted his cob and rode back to Greshamsbury.

CHAPTER XIV

SENTENCE OF EXILE

Dr Thorne did not at once go home to his own house. When he reached the Greshamsbury gates, he sent his horse to its own stable by one of the people at the lodge, and then walked on to the mansion. He had to see the squire on the subject of the forthcoming loan, and he had also to see the Lady Arabella.

The Lady Arabella, though she was not personally attached to the doctor with quite so much warmth as some others of her family, still had reasons of her own for not dispensing with his visits to the house. She was one of his patients, and a patient fearful of the disease with which she was threatened. Though she thought the doctor to be arrogant, deficient as to properly submissive demeanour towards herself, an instigator to marital parsimony in her lord, one altogether opposed to herself and her interest in Greshamsbury politics, nevertheless she did feel trust in him as a medical man. She had no wish to be rescued out of his hands by any Dr Fillgrave, as regarded that complaint of hers, much as she may have desired, and did desire, to sever him from all Greshamsbury councils in all matters not touching the healing art.

Now the complaint of which the Lady Arabella was afraid, was cancer: and her only present confidant in this matter was Dr Thorne.

The first of the Greshamsbury circle whom he saw was Beatrice, and he met her in the garden.

‘Oh, doctor,’ said she, ‘where has Mary been this age? She has not been up here since Frank’s birthday.’

‘Well, that was only three days ago. Why don’t you go down and ferret her out in the village?’

‘So I have done. I was there just now, and found her out. She was out with Patience Oriel. Patience is all and all with her now. Patience is all very well, but if they throw me over–‘

‘My dear Miss Gresham, Patience is and always was a virtue.’

‘A poor, beggarly, sneaking virtue after all, doctor. They should have come up, seeing how deserted I am here. There’s absolutely nobody left.’

‘Has Lady de Courcy gone?’

‘Oh, yes! All the De Courcys have gone. I think, between ourselves, Mary stays away because she does not love them too well. They have all gone, and taken Augusta and Frank with them.’

‘Has Frank gone to Courcy Castle?’

‘Oh, yes; did you not hear? There was rather a fight about it. Master Frank wanted to get off, and was as hard to catch as an eel, and then the countess was offended; and papa said he didn’t see why Frank was to go if he didn’t like it. Papa is very anxious about his degree, you know.’

The doctor understood it all as well as though it had been described to him at full length. The countess had claimed her prey, in order that she might carry him off to Miss Dunstable’s golden embrace. The prey, not yet old enough and wise enough to connect the worship of Plutus with that of Venus, had made sundry futile feints and dodges in the vain hope of escape. Then the anxious mother had enforced the De Courcy behests with all a mother’s authority. But the father, whose ideas on the subject of Miss Dunstable’s wealth had probably not been consulted, had, as a matter of course, taken exactly the other side of the question. The doctor did not require to be told all this in order to know how the battle had raged. He had not yet heard of the great Dunstable scheme; but he was sufficiently acquainted with Greshamsbury tactics to understand that the war had been carried on somewhat after this fashion.

As a rule, when the squire took a point warmly to heart, he was wont to carry his way against the De Courcy interest. He could be obstinate enough when it so pleased him, and had before now gone so far as to tell his wife, that her thrice-noble sister-in-law might remain at home at Courcy Castle–or, at any rate, not come to Greshamsbury–if she could not do so without striving to rule him and every one else when she got here. This had of course been repeated to the countess, who had merely replied to it by a sisterly whisper, in which she sorrowfully intimated that some men were born brutes, and always would remain so.

‘I think they all are,’ the Lady Arabella had replied; wishing, perhaps, to remind her sister-in-law that the breed of brutes was as rampant in West Barsetshire as in the eastern division of that county.

The squire, however, had not fought on this occasion with all his vigour. There had, of course, been some passages between him and his son, and it had been agreed that Frank should go for a fortnight to Courcy Castle.

‘We mustn’t quarrel with them, you know, if we can help it,’ said the father; ‘and, therefore, you must go sooner or later.’

‘Well, I suppose so; but you don’t know how dull it is, governor.’

‘Don’t I!’ said Gresham.

‘There’s a Miss Dunstable to be there; did you ever hear of her, sir?’

‘No, never.’

‘She’s a girl whose father used to make ointment, or something of that sort.’

‘Oh, yes, to be sure; the ointment of Lebanon. He used to cover all the walls of London. I haven’t heard of him this year past.’

‘No; that is because he’s dead. Well, she carries on the ointment now, I believe; at any rate, she has got all the money. I wonder what she’s like?’

‘You’d better go and see,’ said the father, who now began to have some inkling of an idea why the two ladies were so anxious to carry his son off to Courcy Castle at this exact time. And so Frank had packed up his best clothes, given a last fond look at the new black horse, repeated his last special injunctions to Peter, and had then made one of the stately cortege which proceeded through the county from Greshamsbury to Courcy Castle.

‘I am very glad of that, very,’ said the squire, when he heard that the money was to be forthcoming. ‘I shall get it on easier terms from him than elsewhere; and it kills me to have continual bother about such things.’ And Mr Gresham, feeling that that difficulty was tided over for a time, and that the immediate pressure of little debts would be abated, stretched himself on his easy chair as though he were quite comfortable;–one may say almost elated.

How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such as this! A man signs away moiety of his substance; nay, that were nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he frees himself from a source of immediate little pestering, stinging troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune has been almost kind to him.

The doctor felt angry with himself for what he had done when he saw how easily the squire adapted himself to this new loan. ‘It will make Scatcherd’s claim upon you very heavy,’ said he.

Mr Gresham at once read all that was passing through the doctor’s mind. ‘Well, what else can I do?’ said he. ‘You wouldn’t have me allow my daughter to lose this match for the sake of a few thousand pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them settled. Look at that letter from Moffat.’

The doctor took the letter and read it. It was a long, wordy, ill-written rigmarole, in which that amorous gentleman spoke with much rapture of his love and devotion for Miss Gresham; but at the same time declared, and most positively swore, that the adverse cruelty of his circumstances was such, that it would not allow him to stand up like a man at the hymeneal altar until six thousand pounds hard cash had been paid down at his banker’s.

‘It may be all right,’ said the squire; ‘but in my time gentlemen were not used to write such letters as that to each other.’

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He did not know how far he would be justified in saying much, even to his friend the squire, in dispraise of his future son-in-law.

‘I told him that he should have the money; and one would have thought that that would have been enough for him. Well: I suppose Augusta likes him. I suppose she wishes the match; otherwise, I would give him such an answer to that letter as would startle him a little.’

‘What settlement is he to make?’ said Thorne.

‘Oh, that’s satisfactory enough; couldn’t be more so; a thousand a year and the house at Wimbledon for her; that’s all very well. But such a lie, you know, Thorne. He’s rolling in money, and yet he talks of this beggarly sum as though he couldn’t possibly stir without it.’

‘If I might venture to speak my mind,’ said Thorne.

‘Well?’ said the squire, looking at him earnestly.

‘I should be inclined to say that Mr Moffat wants to cry off, himself.’

‘Oh, impossible; quite impossible. In the first place, he was so very anxious for the match. In the next place, it is such a great thing for him. And then, he would never dare; you see, he is dependent on the De Courcys for his seat.’

‘But suppose he loses his seat?’

‘But there is not much fear of that, I think. Scatcherd may be a very fine fellow, but I think they’ll hardly return him at Barchester.’

‘I don’t understand much about it,’ said Thorne; ‘but such things do happen.’

‘And you believe that this man absolutely wants to get off the match; absolutely thinks of playing such a trick as that on my daughter;–on me?’

‘I don’t say he intends to do it; but it looks to me as though he were making a door for himself, or trying to make a door: if so, your having the money will stop him there.’

‘But, Thorne, don’t you think he loves the girl? If I thought not–‘

The doctor was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I am not a love-making man myself, but I think that if I were much in love with a young lady, I should not write such a letter as that to her father.’

‘By heavens! If I thought so,’ said the squire–‘but, Thorne, we can’t judge of those fellows as one does of gentlemen; they are so used to making money, and seeing money made, that they have an eye to business in everything.’

‘Perhaps so, perhaps so,’ muttered the doctor, showing evidently that he still doubted the warmth of Mr Moffat’s affection.

‘The match was none of my making, and I cannot interfere now to break it off: it will give her a good position in the world; for, after all, money goes a great way, and it is something to be in Parliament. I can only hope she likes him. I do truly hope she likes him;’ and the squire also showed by the tone of his voice that, though he might hope that his daughter was in love with her intended husband, he hardly conceived it to be possible that she should be so.

And what was the truth of the matter? Miss Gresham was no more in love with Mr Moffat than you are–oh, sweet, young, blooming beauty! Not a whit more; not, at least, in your sense of the word, nor in mine. She had by no means resolved within her heart that of all the men whom she had ever seen, or ever could see, he was far away the nicest and the best. That is what you will do when you are in love, if you be good for anything. She had no longing to sit near to him–the nearer the better; she had no thought of his taste and his choice when she bought her ribbons and bonnets; she had not indescribable desire that all her female friends should be ever talking to her about him. When she wrote to him, she did not copy her letters again and again, so that she might be, as it were, ever speaking to him; she took no special pride in herself because he had chosen her to be his life’s partner. In point of fact, she did not care one straw about him.

And yet she thought she loved him; was, indeed, quite confident that she did so; told her mother that she was sure Gustavus would wish this, she knew Gustavus would like that, and so on; but as for Gustavus himself, she did not care one chip about him.

She was in love with her match just as farmers are in love with wheat and eighty shillings a quarter; or shareholders–innocent gudgeons–with seven and half per cent interest on their paid up capital. Eighty shillings a quarter, and seven and half per cent interest, such were the returns which she had been taught to look for in exchange for her young heart; and, having obtained them, or being thus about to obtain them, why should not her young heart be satisfied? Had she not sat herself down obediently at the feet of her lady Gamaliel, and should she not be rewarded? Yes, indeed, she shall be rewarded.

And then the doctor went to the lady. On their medical secrets we will not intrude; but there were other matters bearing on the course of our narrative, as to which Lady Arabella found it necessary to say a word of so to the doctor; and it is essential that we should know what was the tenor of those few words so spoken.

How the aspirations, and instincts, and feelings of a household become changed as the young birds begin to flutter those feathered wings, and have half-formed thoughts of leaving the parental nest! A few months back, Frank had reigned almost autocratic over the lesser subjects of the kingdom of Greshamsbury. The servants, for instance, always obeyed him, and his sisters never dreamed of telling anything which he directed should not be told. All his mischief, all his troubles, and all his loves were confided to them, with the sure conviction that they would never be made to stand in evidence against him.

Trusting to this well-ascertained state of things, he had not hesitated to declare his love for Miss Thorne before his sister Augusta. But his sister Augusta had now, as it were, been received into the upper house; having duly profited by the lessons of her great instructress, she was now admitted to sit in conclave with the higher powers: her sympathies, of course, became changed, and her confidence was removed from the young and giddy and given to the ancient and discreet. She was as a schoolboy, who, having finished his schooling, and being fairly forced by necessity into the stern bread-earning world, undertakes the new duties of tutoring. Yesterday he was taught, and fought, of course, against the schoolmaster; to-day he teaches, and fights as keenly for him. So it was with Augusta Gresham, when, with careful brow, she whispered to her mother that there was something wrong between Frank and Mary Thorne.

‘Stop it at once, Arabella: stop it at once,’ the countess had said; ‘that, indeed, will be the ruin. If he does not marry money, he is lost. Good heavens! the doctor’s niece! A girl that nobody knows where she comes from!’

‘He’s going with you to-morrow, you know,’ said the anxious mother.

‘Yes; and that is so far well: if he will be led by me, the evil may be remedied before he returns; but it is very, very hard to lead young men. Arabella, you must forbid that girl to come to Greshamsbury again on any pretext whatever. The evil must be stopped at once.’

‘But she is here so much as a matter of course.’

‘Then she must be here as a matter of course no more: there has been folly, very great folly, in having her here. Of course she would turn out to be a designing creature with such temptation before her; with such a prize within her reach, how could she help it?’

‘I must say, aunt, she answered him very properly,’ said Augusta.

‘Nonsense,’ said the countess; ‘before you of course she did. Arabella, the matter must not be left to the girl’s propriety. I never knew the propriety of a girl of that sort to be fit to be depended on yet. If you wish to save the whole family from ruin, you must take steps to keep her away from Greshamsbury now at once. Now is the time; now that Frank is going away. Where so much, so very much depends on a young man’s marrying money, not one day ought to be lost.’

Instigated in this manner, Lady Arabella resolved to open her mind to the doctor, and to make it intelligible to him, that under present circumstances, Mary’s visits at Greshamsbury had better be discontinued. She would have given much, however, to have escaped this business. She had in her time tried one or two falls with the doctor, and she was conscious that she had never yet got the better of him: and then she was in a slight degree afraid of Mary herself. She had a presentiment that it would not be so easy to banish Mary from Greshamsbury: she was not sure that that young lady would not boldly assert her right to her place in the school-room; appeal loudly to the squire, and perhaps, declare her determination of marrying the heir, out before them all. The squire would be sure to uphold her in that, or in anything else.

And then, too, there would be the greatest difficulty in wording her request to the doctor; and Lady Arabella was sufficiently conscious of her own weakness to know that she was not always very good at words. But the doctor, when hard pressed, was never at fault: he could say the bitterest things in the quietest tone, and Lady Arabella had a great dread of these bitter things. What, also, if he should desert her himself; withdraw from her his skill and knowledge of her bodily wants and ailments now that he was so necessary to her? She had once before taken that measure of sending to Barchester for Dr Fillgrave, but it had answered with her hardly better than with Sir Roger and Lady Scatcherd.

When, therefore, Lady Arabella found herself alone with the doctor, and called upon to say out in what best language she could select for the occasion, she did not feel to very much at her ease. There was that about the man before her which cowed her, in spite of her being the wife of the squire, the sister of an earl, a person quite acknowledged to be of the great world, and the mother of a very important young man whose affections were now about to be called in question. Nevertheless, there was the task to be done, and with a mother’s courage she essayed it.

‘Dr Thorne,’ said she, as soon as their medical conference was at an end, ‘I am very glad you came over to-day, for I have something special which I wanted to say to you:’ so far she got, and then stopped; but, as the doctor did not seem inclined to give her any assistance, she was forced to flounder on as best she could.

‘Something very particular indeed. You know what a respect and esteem, and I may say affection, we all have for you,’–here the doctor made a low bow–‘and I may say for Mary also;’ here the doctor bowed himself again. ‘We have done what little we could to be pleasant neighbours, and I think you’ll believe me when I say that I am a true friend to you and dear Mary–‘

The doctor knew that something very unpleasant was coming, but he could not at all guess what might be its nature. He felt, however, that he must say something; so he expressed a hope that he was duly sensible of all the acts of kindness he had ever received from the squire and the family at large.

‘I hope, therefore, my dear doctor, you won’t take amiss what I am going to say.’

‘Well, Lady Arabella, I’ll endeavour not to do so.’

‘I am sure I would not give any pain if I could help it, much less to you. But there are occasions, doctor, in which duty must be paramount; paramount to all other considerations, you know, and, certainly, this occasion is one of them.’

‘But what is the occasion, Lady Arabella?’

‘I’ll tell you, doctor. You know what Frank’s position is?’

‘Frank’s position?’

‘Why his position in life; an only son, you know.’

‘Oh, yes; I know his position in that respect; an only son, and his father’s heir; and a very fine fellow, he is. You have but one son, Lady Arabella, and you may well be proud of him.’

Lady Arabella sighed. She did not wish at the present moment to express herself as being in any way proud of Frank. She was desirous rather, on the other hand, of showing that she was a good deal ashamed of him; only not quite so much ashamed of him as it behoved the doctor to be of his niece.’

‘Well, perhaps so; yes,’ said Lady Arabella, ‘he is, I believe, a very good young man, with an excellent disposition; but, doctor, his position is very precarious; and he is just at that time of life when caution is necessary.’

To the doctor’s ears, Lady Arabella was now talking of her son as a mother might of her infant when whooping-cough was abroad our croup imminent. ‘There is nothing on earth the matter with him, I should say,’ said the doctor. ‘He has every possible sign of perfect health.’

‘Oh yes; his health! Yes, thank God, his health is good; that is a great blessing.’ And Lady Arabella thought of her four flowerets that had already faded. ‘I am sure I am most thankful to see him growing up so strong. But it is not that I mean, doctor.’

‘Then what is it, Lady Arabella?’

‘Why, doctor, the squire’s position with regard to money matters.’

Now the doctor undoubtedly did know the squire’s position with regard to money matters,–knew it much better than Lady Arabella; but he was by no means inclined to talk on that subject to her ladyship. He remained quite silent, therefore, although Lady Arabella’s last speech had taken the form of a question. Lady Arabella was a little offended at this want of freedom on his part, and become somewhat sterner in her tone–a thought less condescending in her manner.

‘The squire has unfortunately embarrassed the property, and Frank must look forward to inherit it with very heavy encumbrances; I fear very heavy indeed, though of what exact nature I am kept in ignorance.’

Looking at the doctor’s face, she perceived that there was no probability whatever that her ignorance would be enlightened by him.

‘And, therefore, it is highly necessary that Frank should be very careful.’

‘As to his private expenditure, you mean?’ said the doctor.

‘No; not exactly that: though of course he must be careful as to that, too; that’s of course. But that is not what I mean, doctor; his only hope of retrieving his circumstances is by marrying money.’

‘With every other conjugal blessing that a man can have, I hope he may have that also.’ So the doctor replied with imperturbable face; but not the less did he begin to have a shade of suspicion of what might be the coming subject of the conference. It would be untrue to say that he had ever thought it probable that the young heir should fall in love with his niece; that he had ever looked forward to such a chance, either with complacency or with fear; nevertheless, the idea had of late passed through his mind. Some word had fallen from Mary, some closely watched expression of her eye, or some quiver in her lip when Frank’s name was mentioned, had of late made him involuntarily think that such a thing might not be impossible; and then, when the chance of Mary becoming the heiress to so large a fortune had been forced upon his consideration, he had been unable to prevent himself from building happy castles in the air, as he rode slowly home from Boxall Hill. But not a whit the more on that account was he prepared to be untrue to the squire’s interest or to encourage a feeling which must be distasteful to all the squire’s friends.

‘Yes, doctor; he must marry money.’

‘And worth, Lady Arabella; and a pure feminine heart; and youth and beauty. I hope he will marry them all.’

Could it be possible, that in speaking of a pure feminine heart, and youth and beauty, and such like gewgaws, the doctor was thinking of his niece? Could it be that he had absolutely made up his mind to foster and encourage this odious match?

The bare idea made Lady Arabella wrathful, and her wrath gave her courage. ‘He must marry money, or he will be a ruined man. Now, doctor, I am informed that things–words that is–have passed between him and Mary which never ought to have been allowed.’

And now the doctor was wrathful. ‘What things? what words?’ said he, appearing to Lady Arabella as though he rose in his anger nearly a foot in altitude before her eyes. ‘What has passed between them? and who says so?’

‘Doctor, there have been love-makings, you may take my word for it; love-makings of a very, very advanced description.’

This, the doctor could not stand. No, not for Greshamsbury and its heir; not for the squire and all his misfortunes; not for Lady Arabella and the blood of the De Courcys could he stand quiet and hear Mary accused. He sprang up another foot in height, and expanded equally in width as he flung back the insinuation.

‘Who says so? Whoever says so, whoever speaks of Miss Thorne in such language, says what is not true. I will pledge my word–‘

‘My dear doctor, my dear doctor, what took place was quite clearly heard; there was no mistake about it, indeed.’

‘What took place? What was heard?’

‘Well, then, I don’t want, you know, to make more of it than can be helped. The thing must be stopped, that is all.’

‘What thing? Speak out, Lady Arabella. I will not have Mary’s conduct impugned by innuendoes. What is that eavesdroppers have heard?’

Dr Thorne, there have been no eavesdroppers.’

‘And not talebearers either? Will you ladyship oblige me by letting me know what is this accusation which you bring against my niece?’

‘There has been most positively an offer made, Dr Thorne.’

‘And who made it?’

‘Oh, of course I am not going to say but what Frank must have been very imprudent. Of course he has been to blame. There has been fault on both sides, no doubt.’

‘I utterly deny it. I positively deny it. I know nothing of the circumstances; have heard nothing about it–‘

‘Then of course you can’t say,’ said Lady Arabella.

‘I know nothing of the circumstance; have heard nothing about it,’ continued Dr Thorne; ‘but I do know my niece, and am ready to assert that there has not been fault on both sides. Whether there has been any fault on any side, that I do not know.’

‘I can assure you, Dr Thorne, that an offer was made by Frank; such an offer cannot be without its allurements to a young lady circumstanced like your niece.’

‘Allurements!’ almost shouted the doctor, and, as he did so, Lady Arabella stepped back a pace or two, retreating from the fire which shot out of his eyes. ‘But the truth is, Lady Arabella, you do not know my niece. If you will have the goodness to let me understand what it is that you desire I will tell you whether I can comply with your wishes.’

‘Of course it will be very inexpedient that the young people should be thrown together again;–for the present, I mean.’

‘Well!’

‘Frank has now gone to Courcy Castle; and he talks of going from thence to Cambridge. But he will doubtless be here, backwards and forwards; and perhaps it will be better for all parties–safer, that is, doctor–if Miss Thorne were to discontinue her visits to Greshamsbury for a while.’

‘Very well!’ thundered out the doctor. ‘Her visits to Greshamsbury shall be discontinued.’

‘Of course, doctor, this won’t change intercourse between us; between you and the and the family.’

‘Not change it!’ said he. ‘Do you think that I will break bread in a house from whence she has been ignominiously banished? Do you think that I can sit in friendship with those who have spoken of her as you have now spoken? You have many daughters; what would you say if I accused them one of them as you have accused her?’

‘Accused, doctor! No, I don’t accuse her. But prudence, you know, does sometimes require us–‘

‘Very well; prudence requires you to look after those who belong to you. And prudence requires me to look after my one lamb. Good morning, Lady Arabella.’

‘But, doctor, you are not going to quarrel with us? You will come when we want you; eh! won’t you?’

Quarrel! quarrel with Greshamsbury! Angry as he was, the doctor felt that he could ill bear to quarrel with Greshamsbury. A man past fifty cannot easily throw over the ties that have taken twenty years to form, and wrench himself away from the various close ligatures with which, in such a period, he has become bound. He could not quarrel with the squire; he could ill bear to quarrel with Frank; though he now began to conceive that Frank had used him badly, he could not do so; he could not quarrel with the children, who had almost been born into his arms; nor even with the very walls, and trees, and grassy knolls with which he was so dearly intimate. He could not proclaim himself an enemy to Greshamsbury; and yet he felt that fealty to Mary required of him that, for the present, he should put on an enemy’s guise.

‘If you want me, Lady Arabella, and send for me, I will come to you; otherwise, if you please, share the sentence which has been passed on Mary. I will now wish you good morning.’ And then bowing low to her, he left the room and the house, and sauntered slowly away to his own home.

What was he to say to Mary? He walked very slowly, down the Greshamsbury avenue with his hands clasped behind his back, thinking over the whole matter; thinking of it, or rather trying to think of it. When a man’s heart is warmly concerned in any matter, it is almost useless for him to endeavour to think of it. Instead of thinking, he gives play to his feelings, and feeds his passion by indulging it. ‘Allurements!’ he said to himself, repeating Lady Arabella’s words. ‘A girl circumstanced like my niece! How utterly incapable is such a woman as that to understand the mind, and the heart, and soul of such a one as Mary Thorne!’ And then his thoughts recurred to Frank. ‘It has been ill done of him; ill done of him: young as he is, he should have had feeling enough to spared me this. A thoughtless word has been spoken which will now make her miserable!’ And then, as he walked on, he could not divest his mind of the remembrance of what had passed between him and Sir Roger. What, if after all, Mary should become the heiress to all that money? What, if she should become, in fact, the owner of Greshamsbury? for, indeed it seemed too possible that Sir Roger’s heir would be the owner of Greshamsbury.

The idea was one which he disliked to entertain, but it would recur to him again and again. It might be, that a marriage between his niece and the nominal heir to the estate might be of all the matches the best for young Gresham to make. How sweet would be the revenge, how glorious the retaliation on Lady Arabella, if, after what had now been said, it should come to pass that all the difficulties of Greshamsbury should be made smooth by Mary’s love, and Mary’s hand! It was a dangerous subject on which to ponder. And, as he sauntered down the road, the doctor did his best to banish it from his mind–not altogether successfully.

But as he went he again encountered Beatrice. ‘Tell Mary I went up to her to-day,’ said she, ‘and that I expect her up here to-morrow. If she does not come here, I shall be savage.’

‘Do not be savage,’ said he, putting out his hand, ‘even though she should not come.’

Beatrice immediately saw that his manner with her was not playful, and that his face was serious. ‘I was only in joke,’ said she; ‘of course I was only joking. But is anything the matter? Is Mary ill?’

‘Oh, no; not ill at all; but she will not be here to-morrow, nor probably for some time. But, Miss Gresham, you must not be savage with her.’

Beatrice tried to interrogate him, but he would not wait to answer her questions. While she was speaking he bowed to her in his usual old-fashioned courteous way, and passed on out of hearing. ‘She will not come up for some time,’ said Beatrice to herself. ‘Then mamma must have quarrelled with her.’ And at once in her heart she acquitted her friend of all blame in the matter, whatever it might be, and condemned her mother unheard.

The doctor, when he arrived in his own house, had in nowise made up his mind as to the manner in which he would break the matter to Mary; but by the time that he had reached the drawing-room, he had made up his mind to this, that he would put off the evil hour till the morrow. He would sleep on the matter–lie awake on it, more probably–and then at breakfast, as best he could, tell her what had been said of her.

Mary that evening was more than usually inclined to be playful. She had not been quite certain till the morning, whether Frank had absolutely left Greshamsbury, and had, therefore, preferred the company of Miss Oriel to going up to the house. There was a peculiar cheerfulness about her friend Patience, a feeling of satisfaction with the world and those in it, which Mary always shared with her; and now she had brought home to the doctor’s fireside, in spite of her young troubles, a smiling face, if not a heart altogether happy.

‘Uncle,’ she said at last, ‘what makes you so sombre? Shall I read to you?’

‘No; not to-night, dearest.’

‘Why, uncle; what is the matter?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘Ah, but it is something, and you shall tell me;’ getting up, she came over to his arm-chair, and leant over his shoulder.

He looked up at her for a minute in silence, and then, getting up from his chair, passed his arm round her waist, and pressed her closely to his heart.

‘My darling!’ he said, almost convulsively. ‘My best own, truest darling!’ and Mary looked up into his face, saw that big tears were running down his cheeks.

But still he told her nothing that night.

CHAPTER XV

COURCY

When Frank Gresham expressed to his father an opinion that Courcy Castle was dull, the squire, as may be remembered, did not pretend to differ from him. To men such as the squire, and such as the squire’s son, Courcy Castle was dull. To what class of men it would not be dull the author is not prepared to say; but it may be presumed that the De Courcys found it to their liking, or they would have made it other than it was.

The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III, which, though they were grand for days of the construction of the Constitution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description. It had, no doubt, a perfect right to be called a castle, as it was entered by a castle-gate which led into a court the porter’s lodge for which was built as it were into the wall; there were attached to it also two round, stumpy adjuncts, which were, perhaps properly, called towers, though they did not do much in the way of towering; and, moreover, along one side of the house, over what would otherwise have been the cornice, there ran a castellated parapet, through the assistance of which, the imagination no doubt was intended to supply the muzzles of defiant artillery. But any artillery which would have so presented its muzzle must have been very small, and it may be doubted whether even a bowman could have obtained shelter there.

The grounds about the castle were not very inviting, nor, as grounds, very extensive; though, no doubt, the entire domain was such as suited the importance of so puissant a nobleman as Earl de Courcy. What, indeed, should have been the park was divided out into various large paddocks. The surface was flat and unbroken; and though there were magnificent elm-trees standing in straight lines, like hedgerows, the timber had not that beautiful, wild, scattered look which generally gives the great charm to English scenery.

The town of Courcy–for the place claimed to rank as a town–was in many particulars like the castle. It was built of dingy-red brick–almost more brown than red–and was solid, dull-looking, ugly and comfortable. It consisted of four streets, which were formed by two roads crossing each other, making at the point of junction a centre for the town. Here stood the Red Lion; had it been called the brown lion, the nomenclature would have been more strictly correct; and here, in the old days of coaching, some life had been wont to stir itself at those house in the day and night when the Freetraders, Tallyhoes, and Royal Mails changed their horses. But now there was a railway station a mile and a half distant, and the moving life of the town of Courcy was confined to the Red Lion omnibus, which seemed to pass its entire time in going up and down between the town and the station, quite unembarrassed by any great weight of passengers.

There were, so said the Courcyites when away from Courcy, excellent shops in the place; but they were not the less accustomed, when at home among themselves, to complain to each other of the vile extortion with which they were treated by their neighbours. The ironmonger, therefore, though he loudly asserted that he could beat Bristol in the quality of his wares in one direction, and undersell Gloucester in another, bought his tea and sugar on the sly in one of those larger towns; and the grocer, on the other hand equally distrusted the pots and pans of home production. Trade, therefore, at Courcy, had not thriven since the railway opened: and, indeed, had any patient inquirer stood at the cross through one entire day, counting customers who entered the neighbouring shops, he might well have wondered that any shops in Courcy could be kept open.

And how changed has been the bustle of that once noisy inn to the present death-like silence of its green courtyard! There, a lame ostler crawls about with the hands thrust into the capacious pockets of his jacket, feeding on memory. That weary pair of omnibus jades, and three sorry posters are all that now grace those stables where horses used to be stalled in close contiguity by the dozen; where twenty grains apiece, abstracted from every feed of oats consumed during the day, would have afforded a daily quart to the lucky pilferer.

Come, my friend, and discourse with me. Let us know what are thy ideas of the inestimable benefits which science has conferred on us in these, our latter days. How dost thou, among others, appreciate railways and the power of steam, telegraphs, telegrams, and our new expresses? But indifferently, you say. ‘Time was I’ve zeed vifteen pair o’ ‘osses go out of this ‘ere yard in vour-and-twenty hour; and now there be’ant vifteen, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days! There was the duik–not this ‘un; he be’ant no gude; but this ‘un’s vather–why, when he’d come down the road, the cattle did be a-going, vour days an eend. Here’d be the tooter and the young gen’lmen, and the governess and the young leddies, and then the servants–they’d be al’ays the grandest folk of all–and then the duik and doochess–Lord love ‘ee, zur; the money did fly in them days! But now–‘ and the feeling of scorn and contempt which the lame ostler was enabled by his native talent to throw into the word ‘now’, was quite as eloquent against the power of steam as anything that has been spoken at dinners, or written in pamphlets by the keenest admirers of latter-day lights.

‘Why, luke at this ‘ere town,’ continued he of the sieve, ‘the grass be a-growing in the very streets;–that can’t be no gude. Why, luke ‘ee here, zur; I do be a-standing at this ‘ere gateway, just this way, hour arter hour, and my heyes is hopen mostly;–I zees who’s a-coming and who’s a-going. Nobody’s a-coming and nobody’s a-going; that can’t be no gude. Luke at that there homnibus; why, darn me–‘ and now, in his eloquence at this peculiar point, my friend became more loud and powerful than ever–‘why, darn me, if maister harns enough with that there bus to put hiron on them osses’ feet, I’ll–be–blowed!’ And as he uttered this hypothetical denunciation on himself he spoke very slowly, bringing out every word as it were separately, and lowering himself at his knees at every sound, moving at the same time his right hand up and down. When he had finished, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.

Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants; of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine! What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road? There is nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish–for thee and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy, care-ridden friend!

Courcy Castle was certainly a dull place to look at, and Frank, in his former visits, had found that the appearance did not belie the reality. He had been but little there when the earl had been at Courcy; and as he had always felt from his childhood a peculiar taste to the governance of his aunt the countess, this perhaps may have added to his feeling of dislike. Now, however, the castle was to be fuller than he had ever before known it; the earl was to be at home; there was some talk of the Duke of Omnium coming for a day or two, though that seemed doubtful; there was some faint doubt of Lord Porlock; Mr Moffat, intent on the coming election–and also, let us hope, on his coming bliss–was to be one of the guests; and there was also to be the great Miss Dunstable.

Frank, however, found that those grandees were not expected quite immediately. ‘I might go back to Greshamsbury for three or four days as she is not to be here,’ he said naively to his aunt, expressing, with tolerable perspicuity, his feeling, that he regarded his visit to Courcy Castle quite as a matter of business. But the countess would hear of no such arrangement. Now that she had got him, she was not going to let him fall back into the perils of Miss Thorne’s intrigues, or even of Miss Thorne’s propriety. ‘It is quite essential,’ she said, ‘that you should be here a few days before her, so that she may see that you are at home.’ Frank did not understand the reasoning; but he felt himself unable to rebel, and he therefore, remained there, comforting himself, as best he might, with the eloquence of the Honourable George, and the sporting humours of the Honourable John.

Mr Moffat was the earliest arrival of any importance. Frank had not hitherto made the acquaintance of his future brother-in-law, and there was, therefore, some little interest in the first interview. Mr Moffat was shown into the drawing-room before the ladies had gone up to dress, and it so happened that Frank was there also. As no one else was in the room but his sister and two of his cousins, he had expected to see the lovers rush into each other’s arms. But Mr Moffat restrained his ardour, and Miss Gresham seemed contented that he should do so.

He was a nice, dapper man, rather above the middle height, and good-looking enough had he had a little more expression in his face. He had dark hair, very nicely brushed, small black whiskers, and a small black moustache. His boots were excellently well made, and his hands were very white. He simpered gently as he took hold of Augusta’s fingers, and expressed a hope that she had been quite will since last he had the pleasure of seeing her. Then he touched the hands of the Lady Rosina and the Lady Margaretta.

‘Mr Moffat, allow me to introduce you to my brother?’

‘Most happy, I’m sure,’ said Mr Moffat, again putting out his hand, and allowing it to slip through Frank’s grasp, as he spoke in a pretty, mincing voice: ‘Lady Arabella quite well?–and your father, and sisters? Very warm isn’t it?–quite hot in town, I do assure you.’

‘I hope Augusta likes him,’ said Frank to himself, arguing on the subject exactly as his father had done; ‘but for an engaged lover he seems to me to have a very queer way with him.’ Frank, poor fellow! who was of a coarser mould, would, under such circumstances, have been all for kissing–sometimes, indeed, even under other circumstances.

Mr Moffat did not do much towards improving the conviviality of the castle. He was, of course, a good deal intent upon his coming election, and spent much of his time with Mr Nearthewinde, the celebrated parliamentary agent. It behoved him to be a good deal at Barchester, canvassing the electors and undermining, by Mr Nearthewinde’s aid, the mines for blowing him out of his seat, which were daily being contrived by Mr Closerstil, on behalf of Sir Roger. The battle was to be fought on the internecine principle, no quarter being given or taken on either side; and of course this gave Mr Moffat as much as he knew how to do.

Mr Closerstil was well known to be the sharpest man at his business in all England, unless the palm should be given to his great rival Mr Nearthewinde; and in this instance he was to be assisted in the battle by a very clever young barrister, Mr Romer, who was an admirer of Sir Roger’s career in life. Some people in Barchester, when they saw Sir Roger, Closerstil and Mr Romer saunter down the High Street, arm in arm, declared that it was all up with poor Moffat; but others, in whose head the bump of veneration was strongly pronounced, whispered to each other that great shibboleth–the name of the Duke of Omnium–and mildly asserted it to be impossible that the duke’s nominee should be thrown out.

Our poor friend the squire did not take much interest in the matter except in so far that he liked his son-in-law to be in Parliament. Both the candidates were in his eye equally wrong in their opinions. He had long since recanted those errors of his early youth, which had cost him his seat for the county, and had abjured the De Courcy politics. He was staunch enough as a Tory now that his being so would no longer be of the slightest use to him; but the Duke of Omnium, and Lord de Courcy, and Mr Moffat were all Whigs; Whigs, however, differing altogether in politics from Sir Roger, who belonged to the Manchester school, and whose pretensions, through some of those inscrutable twists in modern politics which are quite unintelligible to the minds of ordinary men outside the circle, were on this occasion secretly favoured by the high Conservative party.

How Mr Moffat, who had been brought into the political world by Lord de Courcy, obtained the weight of the duke’s interest I never could exactly learn. For the duke and the earl did not generally act as twin-brothers on such occasions.

There is a great difference in Whigs. Lord de Courcy was a Court Whig, following the fortunes, and enjoying, when he could get it, the sunshine of the throne. He was a sojourner at Windsor, and a visitor at Balmoral. He delighted in gold sticks, and was never so happy as when holding some cap of maintenance or spur of precedence with due dignity and acknowledged grace in the presence of all the Court. His means had been somewhat embarrassed by early extravagance; and, therefore, as it was to his taste to shine, it suited him to shine at the cost of the Court rather than at his own.

The Duke of Omnium was a Whig of a very different calibre. He rarely went near the presence of majesty, and when he did so, he did it merely as a disagreeable duty incident to his position. He was very willing that the Queen should be queen so long as he was allowed to be Duke of Omnium. Nor had he begrudged Prince Albert any of his honours till he was called Prince Consort. Then, indeed, he had, to his own intimate friends, made some remark in three words not flattering to the discretion of the Prime Minister. The Queen might be queen so long as he was Duke of Omnium. Their revenues were about the same, with the exception, that the duke’s were his own, and he could do what he liked with them. This remembrance did not unfrequently present itself to the duke’s mind. In person, he was a plain, thin man, tall, but undistinguished in appearance, except that there was a gleam of pride in his eye which seemed every moment to be saying, ‘I am the Duke of Omnium’. He was unmarried, and, if report said true, a great debauchee; but if so he had always kept his debaucheries decently away from the eyes of the world, and was not, therefore, open to that loud condemnation which should fall like a hailstorm round the ears of some more open sinners.

Why these two mighty nobles put their heads together in order that the tailor’s son should represent Barchester in Parliament, I cannot explain. Mr Moffat, was, as has been said, Lord de Courcy’s friend; and it may be that Lord de Courcy was able to repay the duke for his kindness, as touching Barchester, with some little assistance in the county representation.

The next arrival was that of the Bishop of Barchester. A meek, good, worthy man, much attached to his wife, and somewhat addicted to his ease. She, apparently, was made in a different mould, and by her energy and diligence atoned for any want of those qualities which might be observed in the bishop himself. When asked his opinion, his lordship would generally reply by saying–‘Mrs Proudie and I think so and so.’ But before that opinion was given, Mrs Proudie would take up the tale, and she, in her more concise manner, was not wont to quote the bishop as having at all assisted in the consideration of the subject. It was well known in Barsetshire that no married pair consorted more closely or more tenderly together; and the example of such conjugal affection among persons in the upper classes is worth mentioning, as it is believed by those below them, and too often with truth, that the sweet bliss of connubial reciprocity is not so common as it should be among the magnates of the earth.

But the arrival even of the bishop and his wife did not make the place cheerful to Frank Gresham, and he began to long for Miss Dunstable, in order that he might have something to do. He could not get on at all with Mr Moffat. He had expected that the man would at once have called him Frank, and that he would have called the man Gustavus; but they did not even get beyond Mr Moffat and Mr Gresham. ‘Very hot in Barchester, to-day, very,’ was the nearest approach to conversation which Frank could attain with him; and as far as he, Frank, could see, Augusta never got much beyond it. There might be tete-a-tete meetings between them, but, if so, Frank could not detect when they took place; and so, opening his heart at last to the Honourable George, for the want of a better confidant, he expressed his opinion that his future brother-in-law was a muff.

‘A muff–I believe you too. What do you think now? I have been with him and Nearthewinde in Barchester these three days past, looking up the electors’ wives and daughters, and that kind of thing.’

‘I say, if there is any fun in it you might as well take me with you.’

‘Oh, there is not much fun; they are mostly so slobbered and dirty. A sharp fellow in Nearthewinde, and knows what he is about well.’

‘Does he look up the wives and daughters too?’

‘Oh, he goes on every tack just as it’s wanted. But there was Moffat, yesterday, in a room behind the milliner’s shop near Cuthbert’s Gate; I was with him. The woman’s husband is one of the choristers and an elector, you know, and Moffat went to look for his vote. Now, there was no one there when we got there but the three young women, the wife, that is, and her two girls–very pretty women they are too.’

‘I say, George, I’ll go and get the chorister’s vote for Moffat; I ought to do it as he’s to be my brother-in-law.’

‘But what do you think Moffat said to the women?’

‘Can’t guess–he didn’t kiss them, did he?’

‘Kiss any of them? No; but he begged to give them his positive assurance as a gentleman that if he was returned to Parliament he would vote for an extension of the franchise, and the admission of the Jews into the Parliament.’

‘Well, he is a muff,’ said Frank.

CHAPTER XVI

MISS DUNSTABLE

At last the great Miss Dunstable came. Frank, when he heard that the heiress had arrived, felt some slight palpitation at his heart. He had not the remotest idea in the world of marrying her; indeed, during the last week past, absence had so heightened his love for Mary Thorne that he was more than ever resolved that he would never marry any one but her. He knew that he had made her a formal offer for her hand, and that it behoved him to keep to it, let the charms of Miss Dunstable be what they might; but, nevertheless, he was prepared to go through a certain amount of courtship, in obedience to his aunt’s behests, and he felt a little nervous at being brought up in that way, face to face, to do battle with two hundred thousand pounds.

‘Miss Dunstable has arrived,’ said his aunt to him, with great complacency, on his return from an electioneering visit to the beauties of Barchester which he made with his cousin George on the day after the conversation which was repeated at the end of the last chapter. ‘She has arrived, and is looking remarkably well; she has quite a distingue air, and will grace any circle to which she may be introduced. I will introduce you before dinner, and you can take her out.’

‘I couldn’t propose to her to-night, I suppose?’ said Frank, maliciously.

‘Don’t talk nonsense, Frank,’ said the countess angrily. ‘I am doing what I can for you, and taking on an infinity of trouble to endeavour to place you in an independent position; and now you talk nonsense to me.’

Frank muttered some sort of apology, and then went to prepare himself for the encounter.

Miss Dunstable, though she had come by train, had brought with her her own carriage, her own horses, her own coachman and footman, and her own maid, of course. She had also brought with her half a score of trunks, full of wearing apparel; some of them nearly as rich as that wonderful box which was stolen a short time since from the top of a cab. But she brought these things, not in the least because she wanted them herself, but because she had been instructed to do so.

Frank was a little more than ordinarily careful in dressing. He spoilt a couple of white neckties before he was satisfied, and was rather fastidious as the set of his hair. There was not much of the dandy about him in the ordinary meaning of the word. But he felt that it was incumbent on him to look his best, seeing what it was expected he should now do. He certainly did not mean to marry Miss Dunstable; but as he was to have a flirtation with her, it was well that he should do so under the best possible auspices.

When he entered the drawing-room he perceived at once that the lady was there. She was seated between the countess and Mrs Proudie; and mammon, in her person, was receiving worship from the temporalities and spiritualities of the land. He tried to look unconcerned, and remained in the farther part of the room, talking with some of his cousins; but he could not keep his eye off the future possible Mrs Frank Gresham; and it seemed as though she was as much constrained to scrutinize him as he felt to scrutinize her.

Lady de Courcy had declared that she was looking extremely well, and had particularly alluded to her distingue appearance. Frank at once felt that he could not altogether go along with his aunt in this opinion. Miss Dunstable might be very well; but her style of beauty was one which did not quite meet with his warmest admiration.

In age she was about thirty; but Frank, who was no great judge in these matters, and who was accustomed to have very young girls round him, at once put her down as being ten years older. She had a very high colour, very red cheeks, a large mouth, big white teeth, a broad nose, and bright, small, black eyes. Her hair also was black and bright, but very crisp, and strong, and was combed close round her face in small crisp black ringlets. Since she had been brought out into the fashionable world some of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. ‘They’ll always pass muster,’ Miss Dunstable had replied, ‘when they are done up with bank-notes.’ It may therefore be presumed that Miss Dunstable had a will of her own.

‘Frank,’ said the countess, in the most natural and unpremeditated way, as soon as she caught her nephew’s eye, ‘come here. I want to introduce you to Miss Dunstable.’ The introduction was then made. ‘Mrs Proudie, would you excuse me? I must positively go and say a few words to Mrs Barlow, or the poor woman will feel herself huffed’; and so saying, she moved off, leaving the coast clear for Master Frank.

He of course slipped into his aunt’s place, and expressed a hope that Miss Dunstable was not fatigued by her journey.

‘Fatigued!’ said she, in a voice rather loud, but very good-humoured, and not altogether unpleasing; ‘I am not to be fatigued by such a thing as that. Why, in May we came through all the way from Rome to Paris without sleeping–that is, without sleeping in a bed–and we were upset three times out of the sledges coming over the Simplon. It was such fun! Why, I wasn’t to say tired even then.’

‘All the way from Rome to Paris!’ said Mrs Proudie–in a tone of astonishment, meant to flatter the heiress–‘and what made you in such a hurry?’

‘Something about money matters,’ said Miss Dunstable, speaking rather louder than usual. ‘Something to do with the ointment. I was selling the business just then.’

Mrs Proudie bowed, and immediately changed the conversation. ‘Idolatry is, I believe, more rampant than ever in Rome,’ said she; ‘and I fear there is no such thing at all as Sabbath observance.’

‘Oh, not in the least,’ said Miss Dunstable, with rather a joyous air; ‘Sundays and week-days are all the same there.’

‘How very frightful!’ said Mrs Proudie.

‘But it’s a delicious place. I do like Rome, I must say. And as for the Pope, if he wasn’t quite so fat he would be the nicest old fellow in the world. Have you been in Rome, Mrs Proudie?’

Mrs Proudie sighed as she replied in the negative, and declared her belief that danger was apprehended from such visits.

‘Oh!–ah!–the malaria–of course–yes; if you go at the wrong time; but nobody is such a fool as that now.’

‘I was thinking of the soul, Miss Dunstable,’ said the lady-bishop, in her peculiar grave tone. ‘A place where there are no Sabbath observances–‘

‘And have you been at Rome, Mr Gresham?’ said the young lady, turning almost abruptly round to Frank, and giving a somewhat uncivilly cold shoulder to Mrs Proudie’s exhortation. She, poor lady, was forced to finish her speech to the Honourable George, who was standing near to her. He having an idea that bishops and all their belongings, like other things appertaining to religion, should, if possible, be avoided; but if that were not possible, should be treated with much assumed gravity, immediately put on a long face, and remarked that–‘it was a deuced shame: for his part he always liked to see people go quiet on Sundays. The parsons had only one day out of seven, and he thought they were fully entitled to that.’ Satisfied with which, or not satisfied, Mrs Proudie had to remain silent till dinner-time.

‘No,’ said Frank; ‘I never was in Rome. I was in Paris once, that’s all.’ And then, feeling not unnatural anxiety as to the present state of Miss Dunstable’s worldly concerns, he took an opportunity of falling back on that part of her conversation which Mrs Proudie had exercised so much tact in avoiding.

‘And was it sold?’ said he.

‘Sold! what sold?’

‘You were saying about the business–that you came back without going to bed because of selling the business.’

‘Oh!–the ointment. No; it was not sold. After all, the affair did not come off, and I might have remained and had another roll in the snow. Wasn’t it a pity?’

‘So,’ said Frank to himself, ‘if I should do it, I should be owner of the ointment of Lebanon: how odd!’ And then he gave her his arm and handed her down to dinner.

He certainly found that his dinner was less dull than any other he had sat down to at Courcy Castle. He did not fancy that he should ever fall in love with Miss Dunstable; but she certainly was an agreeable companion. She told him of her tour, and the fun she had in her journeys; how she took a physician with her for the benefit of her health, whom she generally was forced to nurse; of the trouble it was to her to look after and wait upon her numerous servants; of the tricks she played to bamboozle people who came to stare at her; and, lastly, she told him of a lover who followed her from country to country, and was now in hot pursuit of her, having arrived in London the evening before she left.

‘A lover?’ said Frank, somewhat startled by the suddenness of the confidence.

‘A lover–yes–Mr Gresham; why should I not have a lover?’

‘Oh!–no–of course not. I dare say you have had a good many.’

‘Only three or four, upon my word; that is, only three or four that I favour. One is not bound to reckon the others, you know.’

‘No, they’d be too numerous. And so you have three whom you favour, Miss Dunstable;’ and Frank sighed, as though he intended to say that the number was too many for his peace of mind.