hall, crumpled it up
in his hand, and muttering something about sorrow for his lordship's
illness, took his leave, without sending as much as a verbal message
in answer to Mr. Slope's note.

"Ill!" said the archdeacon to himself as he flung himself into his
brougham. "The man is absolutely a coward. He is afraid to see me.
Ill, indeed!" The archdeacon was never ill himself, and did not
therefore understand that anyone else could in truth be prevented by
illness from keeping an appointment. He regarded all such excuses as
subterfuges, and in the present instance he was not far wrong.

Dr. Grantly desired to be driven to his father-in-law's lodgings in
the High Street, and hearing from the servant that Mr. Harding was
at his daughter's, followed him to Mrs. Bold's house, and there
found him. The archdeacon was fuming with rage when he got into the
drawing-room, and had by this time nearly forgotten the pusillanimity
of the bishop in the villainy of the chaplain.

"Look at that," said he, throwing Mr. Slope's crumpled note to Mr.
Harding. "I am to be told that if I choose I may have the honour of
seeing Mr. Slope, and that too after a positive engagement with the
bishop."

"But he says the bishop is ill," said Mr. Harding.

"Pshaw! You don't mean to say that you are deceived by such an
excuse as that. He was well enough yesterday. Now I tell you what,
I will see the bishop, and I will tell him also very plainly what I
think of his conduct. I will see him, or else Barchester will soon
be too hot to hold him."

Eleanor was sitting in the room, but Dr. Grantly had hardly noticed
her in his anger. Eleanor now said to him with the greatest innocence,
"I wish you had seen Mr. Slope, Dr. Grantly, because I think perhaps
it might have done good."

The archdeacon turned on her with almost brutal wrath. Had she at
once owned that she had accepted Mr. Slope for her second husband, he
could hardly have felt more convinced of her belonging body and soul
to the Slope and Proudie party than he now did on hearing her express
such a wish as this. Poor Eleanor!

"See him!" said the archdeacon glaring at her. "And why am I to be
called on to lower myself in the world's esteem and my own by coming
in contact with such a man as that? I have hitherto lived among
gentlemen, and do not mean to be dragged into other company by
anybody."

Poor Mr. Harding well knew what the archdeacon meant, but Eleanor
was as innocent as her own baby