Mrs. Morgan’s stocking had dropped on her knees as she listened; then it dropped on the floor, and she took no notice of it. When the Rector had finally delivered himself of his sentiments, which he did in the voice of a judge who was condemning some unfortunate to the utmost penalties of the law, his wife marked the conclusion of the sentence by a sob of strange excitement. She kept gazing at him for a few moments without feeling able to speak, and then she put down her face into her hands. Words were too feeble to give utterance to her feelings at such a supreme moment. “Oh, William, I wonder if you can ever forgive me,” sobbed the Rector’s wife, with a depth of compunction which he, good man, was totally unprepared to meet, and knew no occasion for. He was even at the moment a little puzzled to have such a despairing petition addressed to him. “I hope so, my dear,” he said, very sedately, as he came and sat down beside her, and could not refrain from uttering a little lecture upon temper, which fortunately Mrs. Morgan was too much excited to pay any attention to. “It would be a great deal better if you did not give way to your feelings,” said the Rector; “but in the meantime, my dear, it is your advice I want, for we must not take such a step unadvisedly,” and he lifted up the stocking that had fallen, and contemplated, not without surprise, the emotion of his wife. The excellent man was as entirely unconscious that he was being put up again at that moment with acclamations upon his pedestal, as that he had at a former time been violently displaced from it, and thrown into the category of broken idols. All this would have been as Sanskrit to the Rector of Carlingford; and the only resource he had was to make in his own mind certain half-pitying, half-affectionate remarks upon the inexplicable weakness of women, and to pick up the stocking which his wife was darning, and finally to stroke her hair, which was still as pretty and soft and brown as it had been ten years ago. Under such circumstances a man does not object to feel himself on a platform of moral superiority. He even began to pet her a little, with a pleasant sense of forgiveness and forbearance. “You were perhaps a little cross, my love, but you don’t think I am the man to be hard upon you,” said the Rector. “Now you must dry your eyes and give me your advice—you know how much confidence I have always had in your advice—”
“Forgive me, William. I don’t think there is anyone so good as you are; and as long as we are together it does not matter to me where we are,” said the repentant woman. But as she lifted up her head, her eye fell on the carpet, and a gleam of sudden delight passed through Mrs. Morgan’s mind. To be delivered from all her suspicions and injurious thoughts about her husband would have been a deliverance great enough for one day; but at the same happy moment to see a means of deliverance from the smaller as well as the greater cross of her existence seemed almost too good to be credible. She brightened up immediately when that thought occurred to her. “I think it is the very best thing you could do,” she said. “We are both so fond of the country, and it is so much nicer to manage a country parish than a town one. We might have lived all our lives in Carlingford without knowing above half of the poor people,” said Mrs. Morgan, growing in warmth as she went on; “it is so different in a country parish. I never liked to say anything,” she continued, with subtle feminine policy, “but I never—much—cared for Carlingford.” She gave a sigh as she spoke, for she thought of the Virginian creeper and the five feet of new wall at that side of the garden, which had just been completed, to shut out the view of the train. Life does not contain any perfect pleasure. But when Mrs. Morgan stooped to lift up some stray reels of cotton which the Rector’s clumsy fingers had dropped out of her workbox, her eye was again attracted by the gigantic roses and tulips on the carpet, and content and satisfaction filled her heart.
“I have felt the same thing, my dear,” said Mr. Morgan. “I don’t say anything against Mr. Finial as an architect, but Scott himself could make nothing of such a hideous church. I don’t suppose Wentworth will mind,” said the Rector, with a curious sense of superiority. He felt his own magnanimous conduct at the moment almost as much as his wife had done, and could not help regarding Carlingford Church as the gift-horse which was not to be examined too closely in the mouth.
“No,” said Mrs. Morgan, not without a passing sensation of doubt on this point; “if he had only been frank and explained everything, there never could have been any mistake; but I am glad it has all happened,” said the Rector’s wife, with a little enthusiasm. “Oh, William, I have been such a wretch—I have been thinking—but now you are heaping coals of fire on his head,” she cried, with a hysterical sound in her throat. It was no matter to her that she herself scarcely knew what she meant, and that the good Rector had not the faintest understanding of it. She was so glad, that it was almost necessary to be guilty of some extravagance by way of
