Page:Framley Parsonage.djvu/448

442 rank: she was to be a rich marchioness. And the second was a feeling of anger at the old man for comparing her lot to that of a dairy-maid.

"Quite as easy, I believe," continued he, "though others will tell you that it is not so. But with the countess as with the dairy-maid, it must depend on the woman herself. Being a countess—that fact alone won't make you happy."

"Lord Dumbello at present is only a viscount," said Griselda. "There's no earl's title in the family."

"Oh! I did not know," said Mr. Harding, relinquishing his granddaughter's hand; and, after that, he troubled her with no farther advice.

Both Mrs. Proudie and the bishop had called at Plumstead since Mrs. Grantly had come back from London, and the ladies from Plumstead, of course, returned the visit. It was natural that the Grantlys and Proudies should hate each other. They were essentially Church people, and their views on all Church matters were antagonistic. They had been compelled to fight for supremacy in the diocese, and neither family had so conquered the other as to have become capable of magnanimity and good-humor. They did hate each other, and this hatred had, at one time, almost produced an absolute disseverance of even the courtesies which are so necessary between a bishop and his clergy. But the bitterness of this rancor had been overcome, and the ladies of the families had continued on visiting terms.

But now this match was almost more than Mrs. Proudie could bear. The great disappointment which, as she well knew, the Grantlys had encountered in that matter of the proposed new bishopric had for the moment mollified her. She had been able to talk of poor dear Mrs. Grantly! "She is heartbroken, you know, in this matter, and the repetition of such misfortunes is hard to bear," she had been heard to say, with a complacency which had been quite becoming to her. But now that complacency was at an end. Olivia Proudie had just accepted a widowed preacher at a district church in Bethnal Green—a man with three children, who was dependent on pew-rents; and Griselda Grantly was engaged to the eldest son of the Marquis of Hartletop! When women are enjoined to forgive their enemies, it can not be intended that such wrongs as these should be included.

But Mrs. Proudie's courage was nothing daunted. It