is in the right place and his sentiments are good; but I fear that at present he is succumbing to temptation."
"I am told that he hunts two or three times a week. Every body round us is talking about it."
"No, Mr. Crawley, not two or three times a week; very seldom above once, I think. And then I do believe he does it more with the view of being with Lord Lufton than any thing else."
"I can not see that that would make the matter better," said Mr. Crawley.
"It would show that he was not strongly imbued with a taste which I can not but regard as vicious in a clergyman."
"It must be vicious in all men," said Mr. Crawley. "It is in itself cruel, and leads to idleness and profligacy."
Again Lady Lufton made a gulp. She had called Mr. Crawley thither to her aid, and felt that it would be inexpedient to quarrel with him. But she did not like to be told that her son's amusement was idle and profligate. She had always regarded hunting as a proper pursuit for a country gentleman. It was, indeed, in her eyes, one of the peculiar institutions of country life in England, and it may almost be said that she looked upon the Barsetshire hunt as something sacred. She could not endure to hear that a fox was trapped, and allowed her turkeys to be purloined without a groan. Such being the case, she did not like being told that it was vicious, and had by no means wished to consult Mr. Crawley on that matter. But, nevertheless, she swallowed down her wrath.
"It is, at any rate, unbecoming in a clergyman," she said; "and as I know that Mr. Robarts places a high value on your opinion, perhaps you will not object to advise him to discontinue it. He might possibly feel aggrieved were I to interfere personally on such a question."
"I have no doubt he would," said Mr. Crawley. "It is not within a woman's province to give counsel to a clergyman on such a subject, unless she be very near and very dear to him—his wife, or mother, or sister."
"As living in the same parish, you know, and being, perhaps—" the leading person in it, and the one who naturally rules the others. Those would have been the fitting words for the expression of her ladyship's ideas; but she remembered herself, and did not use them. She had made up her
