the banker, he would let his wife know all about it. Were he to tell her at the present moment, while the matter was all unsettled, the intelligence would frighten her into illness.
But on the next morning there came to him tidings by the hands of Robin postman which for a long while upset all his plans. The letter was from Exeter. His father had been taken ill, and had very quickly been pronounced to be in danger. That evening—the evening on which his sister wrote—the old man was much worse, and it was desirable that Mark should go off to Exeter as quickly as possible. Of course he went to Exeter, again leaving the Framley souls at the mercy of the Welsh Low-Churchman. Framley is only four miles from Silverbridge, and at Silverbridge he was on the direct road to the west. He was therefore at Exeter before nightfall on that day.
But nevertheless he arrived there too late to see his father again alive. The old man's illness had been sudden and rapid, and he expired without again seeing his eldest son. Mark arrived at the house of mourning just as they were learning to realize the full change in their position.
The doctor's career had been, on the whole, successful, but nevertheless he did not leave behind him as much money as the world had given him credit for possessing. Who ever does? Dr. Robarts had educated a large family, had always lived with every comfort, and had never possessed a shilling but what he had earned himself. A physician's fees come in, no doubt, with comfortable rapidity as soon as rich old gentlemen and middle-aged ladies begin to put their faith in him, but fees run out almost with equal rapidity when a wife and seven children are treated to every thing that the world considers most desirable. Mark, we have seen, had been educated at Harrow and Oxford, and it may be said, therefore, that he had received his patrimony early in life. For Gerald Robarts, the second brother, a commission had been bought in a crack regiment. He also had been lucky, having lived and become a captain in the Crimea; and the purchase-money was lodged for his majority. And John Robarts, the youngest, was a clerk in the Petty Bag Office, and was already assistant private secretary to the Lord Petty Bag himself—a place of considerable trust, if not hitherto of large emolument; and on his education money had been spent freely, for in these days a young man can not get
