Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/283

Rh was very sudden. I hope that my lord the bishop bears with becoming fortitude the heavy misfortune. They say that he was a man much beholden to his wife,—prone to lean upon her in his goings out and comings in. For such a man such a loss is more dreadful perhaps than for another."

"They say she led him a terrible life, you know."

"I am not prone, sir, to believe much of what I hear about the domesticities of other men, knowing how little any other man can know of my own. And I have, methinks, observed a proneness in the world to ridicule that dependence on a woman which every married man should acknowledge in regard to the wife of his bosom, if he can trust her as well as love her. When I hear jocose proverbs spoken as to men, such as that in this house the gray mare is the better horse, or that in that house the wife wears that garment which is supposed to denote virile command, knowing that the joke is easy, and that meekness in a man is more truly noble than a habit of stern authority, I do not allow them to go far with me in influencing my judgment."

So spoke Mr. Crawley, who never permitted the slightest interference with his own word in his own family, and who had himself been a witness of one of those scenes between the bishop and his wife in which the poor bishop had been so cruelly misused. But to Mr. Crawley the thing which he himself had seen under such circumstances was as sacred as though it had come to him under the seal of confession. In speaking of the bishop and Mrs. Proudie,—nay, as far as was possible in thinking of them,—he was bound to speak and to think as though he had not witnessed that scene in the palace study.

"I don't suppose that there is much doubt about her real character," said Robarts. "But you and I need not discuss that."

"By no means. Such discussion would be both useless and unseemly."

"And just at present there is something else that I specially want to say to you. Indeed, I went to Silverbridge on the same subject yesterday, and have come here expressly to have a little conversation with you."

"If it be about affairs of mine, Mr. Robarts, I am indeed troubled in spirit that so great labour should have fallen upon you."

"Never mind my labour. Indeed your saying that is a nuisance to me, because I hoped that by this time you would have understood that I regard you as a friend, and that I think nothing any trouble that I do for a friend. Your position just now is so peculiar that it requires a great deal of care."