at college, and that the friendship had been maintained
through life;—though, from the peculiarity
of Mr Crawley’s character, the two had not been
much together of late years. Seeing how things
were going now, and hearing how pitiful was the plight
in which Mr Crawley was placed, the dean would, no
doubt, feel it to be his duty to hasten his return
to England. He was believed to be at this moment
in Jerusalem, and it would be long before a letter
could reach him; but there still wanted three months
to the assizes, and his return might be probably effected
before the end of February.
‘I was never so distressed in my life,’
Mark Robarts said to his wife.
‘And you think you have done no good?’
’Only this, that I have convinced myself that
the poor man is to responsible for what he does, and
that for her sake as well as for his own, some person
should be enabled to interfere for his protection.’
Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also
the message which Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon.
But they both agreed that that message need not be
sent any further.
MAJOR GRANTLY AT HOME
Mrs Thorne had spoken very plainly in the advice which
she had given to Major Grantly. That had been
Mrs Thorne’s advice; and though Major Grantly
had no idea of making the journey so rapidly as the
lady had proposed, still he thought that he would
make it before long, and follow the advice in spirit
if not to the letter. Mrs Thorne had asked him
if it was fair that the girl should be punished because
of the father’s fault; and the idea had been
sweet to him that the infliction or non-infliction
of such punishment should be in his hands. ’You
go and ask her,’ Mrs Thorne had said. Well;—he
would go and ask her. If it should turn out at
last that he had married the daughter of a thief, and
that he was disinherited for doing so—an
arrangement of circumstances which had to teach himself
to regard as very probable—he would not
love Grace the less on that account, or allow himself
for one moment to repent what he had done. As
he thought of all this he became somewhat in love
with a small income, and imagined to himself what honours
would be done to him by the Mrs Thornes of the county,
when they should come to know in what way he had sacrificed
himself to his love. Yes;—they would
go and live in Pau. He thought Pau would do.
He would have enough income for that;—and
Edith would get lessons cheaply, and would learn to
talk French fluently. He certainly would do it.
He would go down to Allington, and ask Grace to be
his wife; and bid her to understand that if she loved
him she could not be justified in refusing him by the
circumstances of her father’s position.
