was taken a little by surprise, but the matter ended in her
promising to go to Ullathorne for at any rate a week or two; on the
day previous to that on which her father drove out to Plumstead, she
had had herself driven out to Ullathorne.

Miss Thorne would not perplex her with her embryo lord on that same
evening, thinking that she would allow her a few hours to make herself
at home; but on the following morning Mr. Arabin arrived. "And now,"
said Miss Thorne to herself, "I must contrive to throw them in each
other's way." That same day, after dinner, Eleanor, with an assumed
air of dignity which she could not maintain, with tears which she
could not suppress, with a flutter which she could not conquer, and a
joy which she could not hide, told Miss Thorne that she was engaged
to marry Mr. Arabin and that it behoved her to get back home to
Barchester as quick as she could.

To say simply that Miss Thorne was rejoiced at the success of the
scheme would give a very faint idea of her feelings on the occasion.
My readers may probably have dreamt before now that they have had
before them some terribly long walk to accomplish, some journey of
twenty or thirty miles, an amount of labour frightful to anticipate,
and that immediately on starting they have ingeniously found some
accommodating short cut which has brought them without fatigue to
their work's end in five minutes. Miss Thorne's waking feelings were
somewhat of the same nature. My readers may perhaps have had to do
with children, and may on some occasion have promised to their young
charges some great gratification intended to come off, perhaps at
the end of the winter, or at the beginning of summer. The impatient
juveniles, however, will not wait, and clamorously demand their treat
before they go to bed. Miss Thorne had a sort of feeling that her
children were equally unreasonable. She was like an inexperienced
gunner, who has ill-calculated the length of the train that he has
laid. The gun-powder exploded much too soon, and poor Miss Thorne
felt that she was blown up by the strength of her own petard.

Miss Thorne had had lovers of her own, but they had been gentlemen
of old-fashioned and deliberate habits. Miss Thorne's heart also had
not always been hard, though she was still a virgin spinster; but it
had never yielded in this way at the first assault. She had intended
to bring together a middle-aged, studious clergyman and a discreet
matron who might possibly