Miss Marjoribanks

anyone’s house, and shows no inclination of going, it is natural that people should feel a little surprised. His visitation was over, and he had dined with everybody, and studied the place and its characteristics, and entered into everything that was going on. The only thing, indeed, that he did not seem to think of, was going away. If it had been Mr. Cavendish, the chances are that he would have made himself so much one of the family, that his departure would have been felt as a domestic calamity; but the Archdeacon was very different from Mr. Cavendish. So long as he was in the house it was impossible to forget either his position or his ways of thinking, or the absence of any real connection between himself and his hosts. He did not combat or contradict anybody, but he would give a faint smile when the Colonel uttered his old-fashioned sentiments, which drove the old soldier frantic. “As if I was not able to form an opinion, by Jove!” Colonel Chiley said; while, on the other hand, the Archdeacon was quite ready to enter into the young people’s absurd theories, and discuss the very Bible itself, as if that were a book to be discussed. As for the Rector, he turned his head away when he passed Colonel Chiley’s door, and Miss Bury made visits of condolence and sympathy. “You must feel it a great responsibility having Mr. Beverley with you,” the Rector’s sister would say, though naturally without any distinct explanation of her meaning; and then she would look at Mrs. Chiley and sigh.

“Oh, I am sure it is a great pleasure,” Mrs. Chiley answered, not willing to let down the prestige of her guest. “He is very nice, and takes a great deal of interest in everything; and then, you know, he is a connection of ours. The Colonel’s niece, Mary Chiley⁠—”

“Yes, I know,” said Miss Bury. “Poor thing! she looked suffering the last time I saw her. I hope she has found the true consolation to support her, now she has entered into the troubles of life.”

“Well, yes, I hope so,” said Mrs. Chiley, a little doubtfully; “but you know one does not feel the troubles of life very severely at her age; and I don’t think I should have called a baby a trouble when I was like her. I never had any, you know, and I used to fret over it a great deal; but the Colonel never liked the noise of children, and I suppose it is all for the best.”

“One may always be sure of that,” said Miss Bury, in her instructive way. “I suppose the Archdeacon is going soon,” she added; “he has been here a long time now. I almost wonder he likes to be so long absent from his parish. Two months, is it not?”

“Oh, no⁠—not quite six weeks,” said Mrs. Chiley briskly. “I hope he may be persuaded to stay some time longer. I look upon it as quite a compliment to Carlingford; for, to be sure, he would not stay if he had not some attraction,” said the imprudent old woman. And this was precisely what Miss Bury wanted, as anyone of acute perceptions might have seen from the first.

“It must be a great responsibility for you,” said the Rector’s sister, with a sigh, pressing Mrs. Chiley’s hand. “If it should turn out badly, you know⁠—Of course, my brother and I don’t agree with Mr. Beverley on all points⁠—though I am sure I hope he is quite conscientious; but I do feel for you with such a responsibility,” said Miss Bury, with a look that made the old lady nervous in spite of herself. Thus, notwithstanding all her sense of the duties of hospitality, and her anxiety about Lucilla’s interests, she could not but feel that it would be rather a relief to get so formidable a guest fairly out of the house. It is uncomfortable, it must be allowed, to entertain in your house anybody, particularly a clergyman of whom your Rector does not approve; and there could be no doubt that the Archdeacon was not like the clergymen that Mrs. Chiley had been accustomed to. “And he could come back another time,” she said to herself, by way of conciliating her own weariness with her visitor’s advantage and the interests of Lucilla. But notwithstanding these reflections on Mrs. Chiley’s part and notwithstanding the Colonel’s less amiable growl, uttered every morning⁠—“Does that parson of yours never mean to go away?”⁠—the Archdeacon showed no intention of budging. It was poor Mrs. Chiley who had all the brunt to bear, to exhaust herself in civilities and to be upbraided with “that parson of yours”⁠—whereas he was not in the least her parson, nor even the kind of man she approved of as a clergyman. All this, however, the brave old woman bore with fortitude for Lucilla’s sake: certainly it must be Lucilla who kept him in Carlingford⁠—if it were not something else.

Things were in this condition, Mr. Cavendish having again disappeared into utter darkness, and Carlingford beginning to enter warmly into the question whether or not Mr. Beverley was paying attention to Lucilla, when it happened to Miss Marjoribanks one morning to meet the Archdeacon in a little lane running between Grove Street and Grange Lane. Opening from this lane was a little door in the wall, which admitted to a little garden very bright with flowers of the simplest old-fashioned kinds, with a little house planted at its extremity, which had pretensions to be an old-fashioned and quasi-rural cottage, on the score of being very rickety, uncomfortable, and badly arranged. But it must be a very impracticable erection indeed which does not look tolerable under the bright sunshine on a summer noon, at the end of a pretty garden where children are playing and birds singing, and a woman or two about. Lucilla was standing at the door of this little closed-up hermitage, almost filling up