I would ask it."
"Then, Eleanor, it is my duty to tell you," and now she spoke with
a tremendous gravity, "that the archdeacon thinks that such a
correspondence is disgraceful, and that he cannot allow it to go on
in his house."
Eleanor's eyes flashed fire as she answered her sister, jumping
up from her seat as she did so. "You may tell the archdeacon that
wherever I am I shall receive what letters I please and from whom I
please. And as for the word 'disgraceful,' if Dr. Grantly has used
it of me, he has been unmanly and inhospitable," and she walked off
to the door. "When Papa comes from the dining-room I will thank you
to ask him to step up to my bedroom. I will show him Mr. Slope's
letter, but I will show it to no one else." And so saying, she
retreated to her baby.
She had no conception of the crime with which she was charged. The
idea that she could be thought by her friends to regard Mr. Slope as
a lover had never flashed upon her. She conceived that they were all
prejudiced and illiberal in their persecution of him, and therefore
she would not join in the persecution, even though she greatly
disliked the man.
Eleanor was very angry as she seated herself in a low chair by her
open window at the foot of her child's bed. "To dare to say I have
disgraced myself," she repeated to herself more than once. "How Papa
can put up with that man's arrogance! I will certainly not sit down
to dinner in his house again unless he begs my pardon for that word."
And then a thought struck her that Mr. Arabin might perchance hear
of her "disgraceful" correspondence with Mr. Slope, and she turned
crimson with pure vexation. Oh, if she had known the truth! If she
could have conceived that Mr. Arabin had been informed as a fact that
she was going to marry Mr. Slope!
She had not been long in her room before her father joined her. As
he left the drawing-room Mrs. Grantly took her husband into the
recess of the window and told him how signally she had failed.
"I will speak to her myself before I go to bed," said the archdeacon.
"Pray do no such thing," said she; "you can do no good and will only
make an unseemly quarrel in the house. You have no idea how
headstrong she can be."
The archdeacon declared that as to that he was quite indifferent. He
knew his duty and would do it. Mr. Harding was weak in the extreme
in such matters. He would not have it hereafter on his conscience
that he had not done all that in him lay to
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