pecially when she remembered the proposed connection between Lucy and Lord Lufton?
"Your fault, Ludovic?"
"Yes, mother. It was I who introduced him to Mr. Sowerby; and, to tell the truth, I do not think he would ever have been intimate with Sowerby if I had not given him some sort of a commission with reference to money-matters then pending between Mr. Sowerby and me. They are all over now—thanks to you, indeed."
"Mr. Robarts' character as a clergyman should have kept him from such troubles, if no other feeling did so."
"At any rate, mother, oblige me by letting it pass by."
"Oh, I shall say nothing to him."
"You had better say something to her, or otherwise it will be strange; and even to him I would say a word or two—a word in kindness, as you so well know how. It will be easier to him in that way than if you were to be altogether silent."
No farther conversation took place between them at the time, but later in the evening she brushed her hand across her son's forehead, sweeping the long silken hairs into their place, as she was wont to do when moved by any special feeling of love. "Ludovic," she said, "no one, I think, has so good a heart as you. I will do exactly as you would have me about this affair of Mr. Robarts and the money." And then there was nothing more said about it.
And now, at this period, terrible rumors found their way into Barchester, and flew about the cathedral towers and round the cathedral door—ay, and into the canons' houses and the humbler sitting-rooms of the vicars choral. Whether they made their way from thence up to the bishop's palace, or whether they descended from the palace to the Close, I will not pretend to say. But they were shocking, unnatural, and, no doubt, grievous to all those excellent ecclesiastical hearts which cluster so thickly in those quarters.
The first of these had reference to the new prebendary, and to the disgrace which he had brought on the chapter—
