“Is that Bertie that has gone down the avenue with Lucy? What does she want with him?”
“Nothing,” said Lady Curtis. “She was going to the village, and he was returning to the Rectory.”
“What does he want with her then?” said Sir John, “you should not let her walk about the country with any stray man that may turn up.”
“It is her cousin, John--surely she may walk down the avenue with her cousin--when they are both going the same way.”
“Oh yes,” he said; “surely she may, what harm can there be in it? Until you find out suddenly perhaps that another marriage has been concocted under your nose, and another of your children thrown herself away.”
“Have you seen any signs of it? Should you dislike it, John? I am so glad! I almost feared you were--favourable to him--thinking of something of the kind.”
“I!” he went from the window to the fire, and propped himself up against the mantelpiece with his back to it. From thence he talked slowly, perorating at his ease, and it was so pleasant to him to have an audience, and to have attention, that a sense of relief and comfort, not to speak of warmth, stole into his whole being. “I don’t like parsons,” he said, “I never trust them--you can’t tell what they’re after. It may be your money for charities, or it may be your daughter; and you never know which it is. And Bertie’s so much worse than an ordinary parson that he doesn’t even pretend to like his trade. He wasn’t brought up to it, not young enough. So he has his own vices to start with, and the parson vices plastered over them. I don’t like your wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“Perhaps we are hard upon him, John. Poor fellow, it was not his fault he was put into the Church; it is not his congenial sphere.”
“He should have been on the turf,” said Sir John. “If I had known the kind of fellow he was, notwithstanding the traditions of the family, he shouldn’t have had the living; and if we don’t mind he’ll have our girl too.”
“Oh, no!” said Lady Curtis. “I was half afraid you _wished_ for it, and was grieved for your disappointment.”
“Disappointment!” he echoed again, and then after a pause he said, earnestly, “My lady, there must be no nonsense about Lucy. There must be no second _fiasco_ of a marriage. You are not a duenna, and I don’t want you to behave as if she was not to be trusted; but, after all, what is Lucy but a girl, like others? She must be taken care of; there must be no nonsense about her. If Arthur had behaved as he ought, it might have been different; but Arthur has been a fool, and there’s an end of it, and that changes her position.”