第111章

Eleanor was very angry as she seated herself in a low chair by her open window at the foot of her child's bed. 'To dare to say that Ihave disgraced myself,' she repeated to herself more than once.

'How papa can put up with that man's arrogance! I will certainly not sit down to dinner in this house again unless he begs my pardon for that word.' And then a thought struck her that Mr Arabin might perchance hear of her 'disgraceful' correspondence with Mr Slope, and she turned crimson with pure vexation. Oh, if she had known the truth! If she could have conceived that Mr Arabin had been informed as a fact that she was going to marry Mr Slope!

She had not been long in her room before her father joined her. As he left the drawing-room Mrs Grantly took her husband into the recess of the window, and told him how signally she had failed.

'I will speak to her myself before I go to bed,' said the archdeacon.

'Pray do no such thing,' said she; 'you can do no good and will only make an unseemly quarrel in the house. You have no idea how headstrong she can be.'

The archdeacon declared that as to that he was quite indifferent.

He knew his duty and he would do it. Mr Harding was weak in the extreme in such matters. He would not have it hereafter on his conscience that he had not done all that in him lay to prevent so disgraceful an alliance. It was in vain that Mrs Grantly assured him that speaking to Eleanor angrily would only hasten such a crisis, and render it certain if at present there were any doubt.

He was angry, self-willed, and sore. The fact that a lady in his household had received a letter from Mr Slope had wounded his pride in the sorest place, and nothing could control him.

Mr Harding looked worn and woebegone as he entered his daughter's room. These sorrows worried him sadly. He felt that if they were continued he must go to the wall in a manner so kindly prophesied to him by the chaplain. He knocked gently at his daughter's door, waited till he was distinctly bade to enter, and then appeared as though he and not she was the suspected criminal.

Eleanor's arm was soon within his, and she had soon kissed his forehead and caressed him, not with joyous but with eager love.

'Oh, papa,' she said, 'I do so want to speak to you. They have been talking about me downstairs to-night; don't you know they have, papa?'

Mr Harding confessed with a sort of murmur that the archdeacon had been speaking of her.

'I shall hate Dr Grantly soon--'

'Oh, my dear!'

'Well; I shall. I cannot help it. He is so uncharitable, so unkind, so suspicious of everyone that does not worship himself: and then he is so monstrously arrogant to other people who have a right to their opinions as well as he has to his own.'

'He is an earnest, eager man, my dear: but he never means to be unkind.'

'He is unkind, papa, most unkind. There, I got that letter from Mr Slope before dinner. It was you yourself who gave it to me. There;pray read it. It is all for you. It should have been addressed to you. You know how they have been talking about it downstairs. You know how they behaved to me at dinner. And since dinner Susan has been preaching to me, till I could not remain in the room with her.

Read it, papa; and then say whether that is a letter that need make Dr Grantly so outrageous.'