A LOVE SCENE
Mr Slope, as we have said, left the palace with a feeling of
considerable triumph. Not that he thought that his difficulties
were over; he did not so deceive himself; but he felt that he had
played his first move well, as well as the pieces on the board
would allow; and that he had nothing with which to reproach
himself. He first of all posted the letter to the archbishop, and
having made that sure he proceeded to push the advantage which he
had gained. Had Mrs Bold been at home, he would have called on her;
but he knew that she was at Plumstead, as he wrote the following
note. It was the beginning of what, he trusted, might be a long and
tender series of epistles.
'My dear Mrs Bold,--You will understand perfectly that I cannot at
present correspond with your father. I heartily wish that I could,
and hope the day may be not long distant, when mists shall have
cleared away, and we may know each other. But I cannot preclude
myself from the pleasure of sending you these few lines to say that
Mr Q. has to-day, in my presence, resigned any title that he ever
had to the wardenship of the hospital, and that the bishop has
assured me that it is his intention to offer it to your esteemed
father.
'Will you, with my respectful compliments, ask him, who I believe
is a fellow visitor with you, to call on the bishop either on
Wednesday or Thursday, between ten and one. This is by the bishop's
desire. If you will so far oblige me as to let me have a line
naming either day, and the hour which will suit Mr Harding, I will
take care that the servants shall have orders to show him in
without delay. Perhaps I should say no more,--but still I wish you
could make your father understand that no subject will be mooted
between his lordship and him, which will refer at all to the method
in which he may choose to perform his duty. I for one, am persuaded
that no clergyman could perform it more satisfactorily than he did,
or than he will do again.
'On a former occasion I was indiscreet and much too impatient,
considering your father's age and my own. I hope he will not now
refuse my apology. I still hope also that with your aid and sweet
pious labours, we may live to attach such a Sabbath school to the
old endowment, as may, by God's grace and furtherance, be a
blessing to the poor of this city.
'You will see at once that this letter is confidential. The
subject, of course, makes it so. But, equally, of course, it is for
your parent's eye as well as for your own, should you think it
proper to show it to him.
'I hope my darling little friend Johnny is as strong as ever,--
dear little fellow. Does he still continue his rude assaults on
those beautiful long silken tresses?
'I can assure your friends miss you from Barchester sorely; but it
would be cruel to begrudge you your sojourn among flowers and
fields during this truly sultry weather.
'Pray believe me, my dear Mrs Bold Yours most sincerely, 'OBADIAH
SLOPE. 'Barchester, Friday.'
Now this letter, taken as a whole, and with the consideration that
Mr Slope wished to assume a great degree of intimacy with Eleanor,
would not have been bad, but for the allusion to the tresses.
Gentlemen do not write to ladies about their tresses, unless they
are on very intimate terms indeed. But Mr Slope could not be
expected to be aware of this. He longed to put a little affection
into his epistle, and yet he thought it injudicious, as the letter
would he knew be shown to Mr Harding. He would have insisted that
the letter should be strictly private and seen by no eyes but
Eleanor's own, had he not felt that such an injunction would have
been disobeyed. He therefore restrained his passion, did not sign
himself 'yours affectionately,' and contented himself instead with
the compliment to the tresses.
We will now follow his letter. He took it to Mrs Bold's house, and
learning there, from the servant, that things were to be sent out
to Plumstead that afternoon, left it, with many injunctions, in her
hands.
We will now follow Mr Slope so as to complete the day with him, and
then return to his letter and its momentous fate in the next
chapter.
There is an old song which gives us some very good advice about
courting:--
"It's gude to be off with the auld luve
Before ye be on wi' the new."
Of the wisdom of this maxim Mr Slope was ignorant, and accordingly,
having written his letter to Mrs Bold, he proceeded to call upon
the Signora Neroni. Indeed it was hard to say which was the old
love and which was the new, Mr Slope having been smitten with both
so nearly at the same time. Perhaps he thought it not amiss to have
two strings to his bow. But two strings to Cupid's bow are always
dangerous to him on whose behalf they are to be used. A man should
remember that between two stools he may fall to the ground.
But in sooth Mr Slope was pursuing Mrs Bold in obedience to his
better instincts, and the signora in obedience to his worse. Had he
won the widow and worn her, no one could have blamed him. You, O
reader, and I, and Eleanor's other friends would have received the
story of such a winning with much disgust and disappointment; but
we should have been angry with Eleanor, not with Mr Slope. Bishop,
male and female, dean and chapter and diocesan clergy in full
congress, could have found nothing to disapprove of in such an
alliance. Convocation itself, that mysterious and mighty synod,
could in no wise have fallen foul of it. The possession of L 1000 a
year and a beautiful wife would not al all have hurt the voice of
the pulpit character, or lessened the grace and piety of the
exemplary clergyman.
But not of such a nature were likely to be his dealings with the
Signora Neroni. In the first place he knew that her husband was
living, and therefore he could not woo her honestly. Then again she
had nothing to recommend her to his honest wooing had such been
possible. She was not only portionless, but also from misfortune
unfitted to be chosen as the wife of any man who wanted a useful
mate. Mr Slope was aware that she was a helpless hopeless cripple.
But Mr Slope could not help himself. He knew that he was wrong in
devoting his time to the back drawing-room in Dr Stanhope's house.
He knew that what took place would if divulged utterly ruin him
with Mrs Bold. He knew that scandal would soon come upon his heels
and spread abroad among the black coats of Barchester some tidings,
some exaggerated tidings, of the sighs which he poured into the
lady's ears. He knew that he was acting against the recognised
principles of his life, against those laws of conduct by which he
hoped to achieve much higher success. But as we have said, he could
not help himself. Passion, for the first time in his life, passion
was too strong for him.
As for the signora, no such plea can be put forward for her, for in
truth, she cared no more for Mr Slope than she did for twenty
others who had been at her feet before him. She willingly, nay
greedily, accepted his homage. He was the finest fly that
Barchester had hitherto afforded to her web; and the signora was a
powerful spider that made wondrous webs, and could in no way live
without catching flies. Her taste in this respect was abominable,
for she had no use for the victims when caught. She could not eat
them matrimonially as young lady-flies do whose webs are most
frequently of their mother's weaving. Nor could she devour them by
any escapade of a less legitimate description. Her unfortunate
affliction precluded her from all hope of levanting with a lover.
It would be impossible to run away with a lady who required three
servants to move her from a sofa.
The signora was subdued by no passion. Her time for love was gone.
She had lived out her heart, such heart as she ever had ever had,
in her early years, at an age when Mr Slope was thinking of his
second book of Euclid and his unpaid bill at the buttery hatch. In
age the lady was younger than the gentleman; but in feelings, in
knowledge of the affairs of love, in intrigue, he was immeasurably
her junior. It was necessary to her to have some man at her feet.
It was the one customary excitement of her life. She delighted in
the exercise of power which this gave her; it was now nearly the
only food for her ambition; she would boast to her sister that she
could make a fool of any man, and the sister, as little imbued with
feminine delicacy as herself, good naturedly thought it but fair
that such amusement should be afforded to a poor invalid who was
debarred from the ordinary pleasures of life.
Mr Slope was madly in love, but hardly knew it. The signora spitted
him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she might enjoy the
energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew very well what she
was doing.
Mr Slope having added to his person all such adornments as are
possible to a clergyman making a morning visit, such as a clean
neck tie, clean handkerchief, new gloves, and a soupcon of not
necessary scent, called about three o'clock at the doctor's house.
At about this hour the signora was almost always in the back
drawing-room. The mother had not come down. The doctor was out or
in his own room. Bertie was out, and Charlotte at any rate left the
room if any one called whose object was specially with her sister.
Such was her idea of being charitable and sisterly.
Mr Slope, as was his custom, asked for Mr Stanhope, and was told,
as was the servant's custom, that the signora was in the
drawing-room. Upstairs he accordingly went. He found her, as he
always did, lying on her sofa with a French volume before her, and
a beautiful little inlaid writing case open on her table. At the
moment of his entrance she was in the act of writing.
'Ah, my friend,' said she, putting out her left hand to him across
the desk, 'I did not expect you to-day and was this very instant
writing to you--'
Mr Slope, taking the soft fair delicate hand in his, and very soft
and fair and delicate it was, bowed over it his huge red head and
kissed it. It was a sight to see, a deed to record if the author
could fitly do it, a picture to put on canvas. Mr Slope was big,
awkward, cumbrous, and having his heart in his pursuit was ill at
ease. The lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; every thing
about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose
lying among carrots, and when he kissed it he looked as a cow might
do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a
couchant goddess, and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must
have been when courting Adonis.
Oh, that such grace and such beauty should have condescended to
waste itself on such a pursuit!
'I was in the act of writing to you,' said she, 'but now my scrawl
may go into the basket;' and she raised the sheet of gilded note
paper from off her desk as though to tear it.
'Indeed it shall not,' said he, laying the embargo of half a stone
weight of human flesh and blood upon the devoted paper. 'Nothing
that you write for my eyes, signora, shall be so desecrated,' and
he took up the letter, put that also among the carrots and fed on
it, and then proceeded to read it.
'Gracious me! Mr Slope,' said she. 'I hope you don't mean to say
that you keep all the trash I write to you. Half my time I don't
know what I write, and when I do, I know it is only fit for the
black of the fire. I hope you have not that ugly trick of keeping
letters.'
'At any rate I don't throw them into a waste-paper basket. If
destruction is their doomed lot, they perish worthily, and are
burnt on a pyre, as Dido was of old.'
'With a steel pen stuck through them, of course,' said she, 'to
make the simile more complete. Of all the ladies of my acquaintance
I think Lady Dido was the most absurd. Why did she not do as
Cleopatra did? Why did she not take out her ships and insist on
going with him? She could not bear to lose the land she had got by
a swindle; and then she could not bear the loss of her lover. So
she fell between two stools. Mr Slope, whatever you do, never
mingle love and business.'
Mr Slope blushed up to his eyes, and over his mottled forehead to
the very roots of his hair. He felt sure that the signora knew all
about his intentions with reference to Mrs Bold. His conscience
told him that he was detected. His doom was to be spoken; he was to
be punished for his duplicity, and rejected by the beautiful
creature before him. Poor man. He little dreamt that had all his
intentions with reference to Mrs Bold been known to the signora, it
would only have added zest to that lady's amusement. It was all
very well to have Mr Slope at her feet, to show her power by making
an utter fool of a clergyman, to gratify her own infidelity by thus
proving the little strength which religion had in controlling the
passions even of a religious man; but it would be an increased
gratification if she could be made to understand that she was at
the same time alluring her victim away from another, whose love if
secured would be in every way beneficial and salutary.
The signora had indeed discovered with the keen instinct of such a
woman, that Mr Slope was bent on matrimony with Mrs Bold, but in
alluding to Dido she had not thought of it. She instantly
perceived, however, from her lover's blushes, what was on his mind,
and was not slow in taking advantage of it.
She looked at him full in the face, not angrily, nor yet with a
smile, but with an intense and overpowering gaze; and then holding
up her forefinger, and slightly shaking her head she said:-
'Whatever you do, my friend, do not mingle love and business.
Either stick to your treasure and your city of wealth, or else
follow your love like a true man. But never attempt both. If you
do, you'll have to die with a broken heart as did poor Dido. Which
is it to be with you, Mr Slope, love or money?'
Mr Slope was not so ready with a pathetic answer as he usually was
with touching episodes in his extempore sermons. He felt that he
ought to say something pretty, something also that should remove
the impression on the mind of his lady love. But he was rather put
about how to do it.
'Love,' said he, 'true overpowering love, must be the strongest
passion a man can feel; it must control every other wish, and put
aside every other pursuit. But with me love will never act in that
way unless it is returned;' and he threw upon the signora a look of
tenderness which was intended to make up for all the deficiencies
of his speech.
'Take my advice,' said she. 'Never mind love. After all, what is
it? The dream of a few weeks. That is all its joy. The
disappointment of a life is its Nemesis. Who was ever successful in
true love? Success in love argues that the love is false. True love
is always despondent or tragical. Juliet loved. Haidee loved. Dido
loved, and what came of it? Troilus loved and ceased to be a man.'
'Troilus loved and he was fooled,' said the more manly chaplain. 'A
man may love and yet not be a Troilus. All women are not Cressids.'
'No; all women are not Cressids. The falsehood is not always on the
woman's side. Imogen was true, but now was she rewarded? Her lord
believed her to be the paramour of the first he who came near her
in his absence. Desdemona was true and was smothered. Ophelia was
true and went mad. There is no happiness in love, except at the end
of an English novel. But in wealth, money, houses, lands, goods and
chattels, in the good things of this world, yes, in them there is
something tangible, something that can be retained and enjoyed.'
'Oh, no,' said Mr Slope, feeling himself bound to enter some
protest against so very unorthodox a doctrine, 'this world's wealth
will make no one happy.'
'And what will make you happy--you--you?' said she, raising herself
up, and speaking to him with energy across the table. 'From what
source do you look for happiness? Do not say that you look for
none? I shall not believe you. It is a search in which every human
being spends an existence.'
'And the search is always in vain,' said Mr Slope. 'We look for
happiness on earth, while we ought to be content to hope for it in
heaven.'
'Pshaw! you preach a doctrine which you know you don't believe. It
is the way with you all. If you know that there is no earthly
happiness, why do you long to be a bishop or a dean? Why do you
want lands and income?'
'I have the natural ambition of a man,' said he.
'Of course you have, and the natural passions; and therefore I say
that you don't believe the doctrine you preach. St Paul was an
enthusiast. He believed so that his ambition and passions did not
war against his creed. So does the Eastern fanatic who passes half
his life erect upon a pillar. As for me, I will believe in no
belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will
think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice
of the preacher.'
Mr Slope was startled and horrified, but he felt that he could not
answer. How could he stand up and preach the lessons of his Master,
being there as he was, on the devil's business? He was a true
believer, otherwise this would have been nothing to him. He had
audacity for most things, but he had not audacity to make a
plaything of the Lord's word. All this the signora understood, and
felt much interest as she saw her cockchafer whirl round upon her
pin.
'Your wit delights in such arguments,' said he, 'but your heart and
your reason do not quite go along with them.'
'My heart!' said she; 'you quite mistake the principles of my
composition if you imagine that there is such a thing about me.'
After all, there was very little that was false in anything the
signora said. If Mr Slope allowed himself to be deceived it was his
own fault. Nothing could have been more open than her declarations
about herself.
The little writing table with her desk was still standing before
her, a barrier, as it were, against the enemy. She was sitting as
nearly upright as she ever did, and he had brought a chair close to
the sofa, so that there was only the corner of the table between
him and her. It so happened that as she spoke her hand lay upon the
table, and as Mr Slope answered her he put his hand upon hers.
'No heart!' said he. 'That is a very heavy charge which you bring
against yourself, and one of which I cannot find you guilty--'
She withdrew her hand, not quickly and angrily, as though insulted
by his touch, but gently and slowly.
'You are in no condition to give a verdict on the matter,' said
she, 'as you have not tried me. No; don't say that you intend doing
so, for you know you have no intention of the kind; nor indeed have
I either. As for you, you will take your vows where they will
result in something more substantial than the pursuit of such a
ghostlike, ghastly love as mine--'
'Your love should be sufficient to satisfy the dream of a monarch,'
said Mr Slope, not quite clear as to the meaning of his words.
'Say an archbishop, Mr Slope,' said she. Poor fellow! She was very
cruel to him. He went round again upon his cork on this allusion to
his profession. He tried, however, to smile, and gently accused her
of joking on a matter, which was, he said, to him of such vital
moment.
'Why--what gulls do you men make of us,' she replied. 'How you fool
us to the top of our bent; and of all men you clergymen are the
most fluent of your honeyed caressing words. Now look me in the
face, Mr Slope, boldly and openly.'
Mr Slope did look at her with a languishing loving eye, and as he
did so, he again put forth his hand to get hold of hers.
'I told you to look at me boldly, Mr Slope; but confine your
boldness to your eyes.'
'Oh, Madeline,' he sighed.
'Well, my name is Madeline,' said she; 'but none except my own
family usually call me so. Now look me in the face, Mr Slope. Am I
to understand that you say you love me?'
Mr Slope never had said so. If he had come there with any formed
plan at all, his intention was to make love to the lady without
uttering any such declaration. It was, however, quite impossible
that he should now deny his love. He had, therefore, nothing for
it, but to go down on his knees distractedly against the sofa, and
swear that he did love her with a love passing the love of man.'
The signora received the assurance with very little palpitations or
appearance of surprise. 'And now answer me another question,' said
she; 'when are you to be married to Eleanor Bold?'
Poor Mr Slope went round and round in mortal agony. In such a
condition as his it was really very hard for him to know what
answer to give. And yet no answer would be his surest condemnation.
He might as well at once plead guilty to the charge brought against
him.
'And why do you accuse me of such dissimulation?'
'Dissimulation! I said nothing of dissimulation. I made no charge
against you, and make none. Pray don't defend yourself to me. You
swear that you are devoted to my beauty, and yet you are on the eve
of matrimony with another. I feel this to be rather a compliment.
It is to Mrs Bold that you must defend yourself. That you may find
difficult; unless, indeed, you can keep her in the dark. You
clergymen are cleverer than other men.'
'Signora, I have told you that I loved you, and now you rail at
me?'
'Rail at you. God bless the man; what would he have? Come, answer
me this at your leisure,--not without thinking now, but leisurely
and with consideration,--are you not going to be married to Mrs
Bold?'
'I am not,' said he. And as he said it, he almost hated, with an
exquisite hatred, the woman whom he could not help loving with an
exquisite love.
'But surely you are a worshipper of hers?'
'I am not,' said Mr Slope, to whom the word worshipper was
peculiarly distasteful. The signora had conceived that it would be
so.
'I wonder at that,' said she. 'Do you not admire her? To my eyes
she is the perfection of English beauty. And then she is rich too.
I should have thought she was just the person to attract you. Come,
Mr Slope, let me give you advice on this matter. Marry the charming
widow! She will be a good mother to your children and an excellent
mistress of a clergyman's household.'
'Oh, signora, how can you be so cruel?'
'Cruel,' said she, changing the voice of her banter which she had
been using for one which was expressively earnest in its tone; 'is
that cruelty?'
'How can I love another, while my heart is entirely your own?'
'If that were cruelty, Mr Slope, what might you say of me if I were
to declare that I returned your passion? What would you think if I
bound you even by a lover's oath to do daily penance at this couch
of mine? What can I give in return for a man's love? Ah, dear
friend, you have not realised the condition of my fate.'
Mr Slope was not on his knees all this time. After his declaration
of love he had risen from them as quickly as he thought consistent
with the new position which he now filled, and as he stood was
leaning on the back of his chair. This outburst of tenderness on
the Signora's part quite overcame him, and made him feel for the
moment that he could sacrifice everything to be assured of the love
of the beautiful creature before him, maimed, lame, and already
married as she was.
'And can I not sympathise with your lot?' said he, now seating
himself on her sofa, and pushing away the table with his foot.
'Sympathy is so near to pity!' said she. 'If you pity me, cripple
as I am, I shall spurn you from me.'
'Oh, Madeline, I will only love you,' and again he caught her hand
and devoured it with kisses. Now she did not draw from him, but sat
there as he kissed it, looking at him with her great eyes, just as
a great spider would look at a great fly that was quite securely
caught.
'Suppose Signor Neroni were to come to Barchester,' said she,
'would you make his acquaintance?'
'Signor Neroni!' said he.
'Would you introduce him to the bishop, and Mrs Proudie, and the
young ladies?' said she, again having recourse to that horrid
quizzing voice which Mr Slope so particularly hated.
'Why do you ask me such a question?' said he.
'Because it is necessary that you should know that there is a
Signor Neroni. I think you had forgotten it.'
'If I thought that you retained for that wretch one particle of the
love of which he was never worthy, I would die before I would
distract you by telling you what I feel. No! were your husband the
master of your heart, I might perhaps love you; but you should
never know it.'
'My heart again! How you talk. And you consider then, that if a
husband be not master of his wife's heart, he has not right to her
fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true. Is that
your doctrine on this matter, as a minister of the Church of
England?'
Mr Slope tried hard within himself to cast off the pollution with
which he felt that he was defiling his soul. He strove to tear
himself away from the noxious siren that had bewitched him. He had
looked for rapturous joy in loving this lovely creature, and he
already found that he met with little but disappointment and
self-rebuke. He had come across the fruits of the Dead Sea, so
sweet and delicious to the eye, so bitter and nauseous to the
taste. He had put the apple to his mouth, and it had turned to
ashes between his teeth. Yet he could not tear himself away. He
knew, he could not but know, that weakness of his religion. But she
half permitted his adoration, and that half permission added such
fuel to his fire that all the fountain of piety could not quench
it. He began to feel savage, irritated, and revengeful. He
meditated some severity of speech, some taunt that should cut her,
as her taunts cut him. He reflected as he stood there for a moment,
silent before her, that if he desired to quell her proud spirit, he
should do so by being prouder even than herself; that if he wished
to have her at his feet suppliant for his love it behoved him to
conquer her by indifference. All this passed through his mind. As
far as dead knowledge went, he knew, or thought he knew, how a
woman should be tamed. But when he essayed to bring his tactics to
bear, he failed like a child. What chance has dead knowledge with
experience in any of the transactions between man and man? What
possible between man and woman? Mr Slope loved furiously, insanely,
and truly; but he had never played the game of love. The signora
did not love at all, but she was up to every move on the board. It
was Philidor pitched against a school-boy.
And so she continued to insult him, and he continued to bear it.
'Sacrifice the world for love!' said she, in answer to some renewed
rapid declaration of his passion, 'how often has the same thing
been said, and how invariably with the same falsehood!'
'Falsehood,' said he. 'Do you say that I am false to you? Do you
say that my love is not real?'
'False? Of course it is false, false as the father of falsehood--if
indeed falsehoods need a sire and are not self-begotten since the
world began. You are ready to sacrifice the world for love? Come
let us see what you will sacrifice. I care nothing for nuptial
vows. The wretch, I think you were kind enough to call him so, whom
I swore to love and obey, is so base that he can only be thought of
with repulsive disgust. In the council chamber of my heart I have
divorced him. To me that is as good as though aged lords had
gloated for months over the details of his licentious life. I care
nothing for what the world can say. Will you be as frank? Will you
take me to your home as your wife? Will you call me Mrs Slope
before bishop, dean, and prebendaries?' The poor tortured wretch
stood silent, not knowing what to say. 'What! You won't do that.
Tell me then, what part of the world is it that you will sacrifice
for my charms?'
'Were you free to marry, I would take you to my house to-morrow and
wish no higher privilege.'
'I am free;' said she, almost starting up in her energy. For though
there was no truth in her pretended regard for her clerical
admirer, there was a mixture of real feeling in the scorn and
satire with which she spoke of love and marriage generally. 'I am
free; free as the winds. Come, will you take me as I am? Have your
wish; sacrifice the world, and prove yourself a true man.'
Mr Slope should have taken her at her word. She would have drawn
back, and he would have had the full advantage of the offer. But he
did not. Instead of doing so, he stood wrapt in astonishment,
passing his fingers through his lank red hair, and thinking as he
stared upon her animated countenance that her wondrous beauty grew
more and more wonderful as he gazed on it. 'Ha! Ha! Ha!,' she
laughed out loud. 'Come, Mr Slope, don't talk of sacrificing the
world again. People beyond one-and-twenty should never dream of
such a thing. You and I, if we have the dregs of any love left in
us, if we have the remnants of a passion remaining in our hearts,
should husband our resources better. We are not in our premiere
jeunesse. The world is a very nice place. Your world, at any rate,
is so. You have all manner of fat rectories to get, and possible
bishoprics to enjoy. Come, confess; on second thoughts you would
not sacrifice such things for the smiles of a lame lady?'
It was impossible for him to answer this. In order to be in any way
dignified, he felt that he must be silent.
'Come,' said she--'don't boody with me: don't be angry because I
speak out some home truths. Alas, the world, as I have found it,
has taught me bitter truths. Come, tell me that I am forgiven. Are
we not to be friends?' and she again put her hand to him.
He sat himself down on the chair beside her, and took her proffered
hand and leant over her.
'There,' said she, with her sweetest, softest smile--a smile to
withstand which a man should be cased in triple steel, 'there; seal
your forgiveness on it,' and she raised it towards his face. He
kissed it again and again, and stretched over her as though
desirous of extending the charity of his pardon beyond the hand
that was offered to him. She managed, however, to check his ardour.
For one so easily allured as this poor chaplain, her hand was
surely enough.
'Oh, Madeline!' said he, 'tell me that you love me--do you--do you
love me?'
'Hush,' said she. 'There is mother's step. Our tete-a-tete has been
of monstrous length. Now you had better go. But we shall see you
soon again, shall we not?'
Mr Slope promised that he would call again on the following day.
'And Mr Slope,' she continued, 'pray answer my note. You have it in
your hand, though, I declare during these two hours you have not
been gracious enough to read it. It is about the Sabbath school and
the children. You know how anxious I am to have them here. I have
been learning the catechism myself, on purpose. You must manage it
for me next week. I will teach them, at any rate, to submit
themselves to their spiritual pastors and masters.'
Mr Slope said but little on the subject of Sabbath schools, but he
made his adieu, and betook himself home with a sad heart, troubled
mind, and uneasy conscience.