afflicted, pouring in oil and balm. To the mother of my children you have given life, and to me you have brought light, and comfort, and good words, making my spirit glad within me, as it had not been gladdened before. All this hath come of charity, which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up. Faith and hope are great and beautiful, but charity exceedeth them all." And, having so spoken, instead of leading her out, he went away and hid himself.
How Puck behaved himself as Fanny drove him back to Framley, and how those two ladies in the carriage behaved themselves—of that, perhaps, nothing farther need be said.
But, in spite of all these joyful tidings, it must, alas! be remembered that Pœna, that just but Rhadamanthine goddess, whom we moderns ordinarily call Punishment, or Nemesis when we wish to speak of her goddess-ship, very seldom fails to catch a wicked man, though she have sometimes a lame foot of her own, and though the wicked man may possibly get a start of her.
In this instance the wicked man had been our unfortunate friend Mark Robarts—wicked in that he had wittingly touched pitch, gone to Gatherum Castle, ridden fast mares across the country to Cobbold's Ashes, and fallen very imprudently among the Tozers; and the instrument used by Nemesis was Mr. Tom Towers, of the Jupiter, than whom, in these our days, there is no deadlier scourge in the hands of that goddess. In the first instance, however, I must mention, though I will not relate, a little conversation which took place between Lady Lufton and Mr. Robarts. That gentleman thought it right to say a few words more to her ladyship respecting those money transactions. He could not but feel, he said, that he had received that prebendal stall from the hands of Mr. Sowerby, and, under such circumstances, considering all that had happened, he could not be easy in his mind as long as he held it. What he was about to do would, he was aware, delay considerably his final settlement with Lord Lufton; but Lufton, he hoped, would pardon that, and agree with him as to the propriety of what he was about to do.
