Page:Framley Parsonage.djvu/17

Rh Lady Lufton herself was a woman who thought much on religious matters, and would by no means have been disposed to place any one in a living merely because such a one had been her son's friend. Her tendencies were High Church, and she was enabled to perceive that those of young Mark Robarts ran in the same direction. She was very desirous that her son should make an associate of his clergyman, and by this step she would insure, at any rate, that. She was anxious that the parish vicar should be one with whom she could herself fully co-operate, and was perhaps unconsciously wishful that he might in some measure be subject to her influence. Should she appoint an elder man, this might probably not be the case to the same extent; and should her son have the gift, it might probably not be the case at all.

And therefore it was resolved that the living should be given to young Robarts.

He took his degree—not with any brilliancy, but quite in the manner that his father desired; he then traveled for eight or ten months with Lord Lufton and a college don, and almost immediately after his return home was ordained.

The living of Framley is in the diocese of Barchester; and, seeing what were Mark's hopes with reference to that diocese, it was by no means difficult to get him a curacy within it. But this curacy he was not allowed long to fill. He had not been in it above a twelve-month when poor old Dr. Stopford, the then vicar of Framley, was gathered to his fathers, and the full fruition of his rich hopes fell upon his shoulders.

But even yet more must be told of his good fortune before we can come to the actual incidents of our story. Lady Lufton, who, as I have said, thought much of clerical matters, did not carry her High-Church principles so far as to advocate celibacy for the clergy. On the contrary, she had an idea that a man could not be a good parish parson without a wife. So, having given to her favorite a position in the world, and an income sufficient for a gentleman's wants, she set herself to work to find him a partner in those blessings.

And here also, as in other matters, he fell in with the views of his patroness—not, however, that they were declared to him in that marked manner in which the affair