she had once satisfied herself. Was not Fanny right when she said that intimate friendships of that nature were dangerous things?
Yes, Lucy, very dangerous. Lucy, before she went to bed that night, had owned to herself that they were so; and lying there with sleepless eyes and a moist pillow, she was driven to confess that the label would in truth be now too late, that the caution had come to her after the poison had been swallowed. Was there any antidote? That was all that was left for her to consider. But, nevertheless, on the following morning she could appear quite at her ease. And when Mark had left the house after breakfast, she could still joke with Fanny about Lady Lufton's poison cupboard.
And then there was that other trouble in Lady Lufton's mind—the sins, namely, of her selected parson. She had selected him, and she was by no means inclined to give him up, even though his sins against parsondom were grievous. Indeed, she was a woman not prone to give up any thing, and of all things not prone to give up a protégé. The very fact that she herself had selected him was the strongest argument in his favor.
But his sins against parsondom were becoming very grievous in her eyes, and she was at a loss to know what steps to take. She hardly dared to take him to task—him himself. Were she to do so, and should he then tell her to mind her own business—as he probably might do, though not in those words—there would be a schism in the parish; and almost any thing would be better than that. The whole work of her life would be upset; all the outlets of her energy would be impeded, if not absolutely closed, if a state of things were to come to pass in which she and the parson of her parish should not be on good terms.
But what was to be done? Early in the winter he had gone to Chaldicotes and to Gatherum Castle, consorting with gamblers, Whigs, atheists, men of loose pleasure, and Proudieites. That she had condoned; and now he was turning out a hunting parson on her hands. It was all
