no one present but her sister to repress either her nature or
her art. Mr. Slope had thus left her quite bewildered, and could not
willingly admit into his brain any scheme a part of which would be
the necessity of his abandoning all further special friendship with
this lady.

And so he slowly rode along, very meditative.

And here the author must beg it to be remembered that Mr. Slope was
not in all things a bad man. His motives, like those of most men,
were mixed, and though his conduct was generally very different from
that which we would wish to praise, it was actuated perhaps as often
as that of the majority of the world by a desire to do his duty.
He believed in the religion which he taught, harsh, unpalatable,
uncharitable as that religion was. He believed those whom he wished
to get under his hoof, the Grantlys and Gwynnes of the church, to be
the enemies of that religion. He believed himself to be a pillar of
strength, destined to do great things, and with that subtle, selfish,
ambiguous sophistry to which the minds of all men are so subject,
he had taught himself to think that in doing much for the promotion
of his own interests, he was doing much also for the promotion of
religion. But Mr. Slope had never been an immoral man. Indeed, he
had resisted temptations to immorality with a strength of purpose
that was creditable to him. He had early in life devoted himself to
works which were not compatible with the ordinary pleasures of youth,
and he had abandoned such pleasures not without a struggle. It must
therefore be conceived that he did not admit to himself that he
warmly admired the beauty of a married woman without heart-felt
stings of conscience; and to pacify that conscience he had to teach
himself that the nature of his admiration was innocent.

And thus he rode along meditative and ill at ease. His conscience
had not a word to say against his choosing the widow and her fortune.
That he looked upon as a godly work rather than otherwise; as a
deed which, if carried through, would redound to his credit as a
Christian. On that side lay no future remorse, no conduct which he
might probably have to forget, no inward stings. If it should turn
out to be really the fact that Mrs. Bold had twelve hundred a year at
her own disposal, Mr. Slope would rather look upon it as a duty which
he owed his religion to make himself the master of the wife and the
money; as a duty too, in which some amount of self-sacrifice