Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 1.djvu/412

372 course it's all the same thing. And as to taking up his case, you see, my dear madam, he won't let me take it up."

"I thought you had. I thought you were down here about it?"

"Only on the sly, Mrs. Walker. He has such queer ideas that he will not allow a lawyer to be properly employed; and you can't conceive how hard that makes it. Do you know him, Mrs. Walker?"

"We know his daughter Grace." And then Mrs. Walker whispered something further, which we may presume to have been an intimation that the gentleman opposite,—Major Grantly,—was supposed by some people to be very fond of Miss Grace Crawley.

"Quite a child, isn't she?" said Toogood, whose own daughter, now about to be married, was three or four years older than Grace.

"She's beyond being a child, I think. Of course she is young."

"But I suppose this affair will knock all that on the head," said the lawyer.

"I do not know how that may be; but they do say he is very much attached to her. The major is a man of family, and of course it would be very disagreeable if Mr. Crawley were found guilty."

"Very disagreeable, indeed; but, upon my word, Mrs. Walker, I don't know what to say about it."

"You think it will go against him, Mr. Toogood?" Mr. Toogood shook his head, and on seeing this, Mrs. Walker sighed deeply.

"I can only say that I have heard nothing from the bishop as yet," said Dr. Tempest, after the ladies had left the room. "Of course, if he thinks well to order it, the inquiry must be made."

"But how long would it take?" asked Mr. Walker.

"Three months, I should think,—or perhaps more. Of course Crawley would do all that he could to delay us, and I am not at all sure that we should be in any very great hurry ourselves."

"Who are the 'we,' doctor?" said Mr. Walker.

"I cannot make such an inquiry by myself, you know. I suppose the bishop would ask me to select two or four other clergymen to act with me. That's the usual way of doing it. But you may be quite sure of this, Walker; the assizes will be over, and the jury have found their verdict long before we have settled our preliminaries."

"And what will be the good of your going on after that?"

"Only this good:—if the unfortunate man be convicted"

"Which he won't," said Mr. Toogood, who thought it expedient to put on a bolder front in talking of the matter to the rural dean, than he had assumed in his whispered conversation with Mrs. Walker.