Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 1.djvu/28

16 to dress, and in about an hour the major arrived in his dog-cart. He also was allowed to go upstairs to dress before anything was said to him about his great offence.

"Griselda is right," said the archdeacon, speaking to his wife out of his dressing-room. "She always was right. I never knew a young woman with more sense than Griselda."

"But you do not mean to say that in any event you would stop Henry's income?" Mrs. Grantly also was dressing, and made reply out of her bedroom.

"Upon my word, I don't know. As a father I would do anything to prevent such a marriage as that."

"But if he did marry her in spite of the threat? And he would if he had once said so."

"Is a father's word, then, to go for nothing; and a father who allows his son eight hundred a year? If he told the girl that he would be ruined she couldn't hold him to it."

"My dear, they'd know as well as I do, that you would give way after three months."

"But why should I give way? Good heavens !"

"Of course you'd give way, and of course we should have the young woman here, and of course we should make the best of it."

The idea of having Grace Crawley as a daughter at the Plumstead Rectory was too much for the archdeacon, and he resented it by additional vehemence in the tone of his voice, and a nearer personal approach to the wife of his bosom. All unaccoutred as he was, he stood in the doorway between the two rooms, and thence fulminated at his wife his assurances that he would never allow himself to be immersed in such a depth of humility as that she had suggested. "I can tell you this, then, that if ever she comes here, I shall take care to be away. I will never receive her here. You can do as you please."

"That is just what I cannot do. If I could do as I pleased, I would put a stop to it at once."

"It seems to me that you want to encourage him. A child about sixteen years of age!"

"I am told she is nineteen."

"What does it matter if she was fifty-nine? Think of what her bringing up has been. Think what it would be to have all the Crawleys in our house for ever, and all their debts, and all their disgrace!"

"I do not know that they have ever been disgraced."

"You'll see. The whole county has heard of the affair of this twenty pounds. Look at that dear girl upstairs, who has been such a