d drink it, and allowed herself to be persuaded. She ate
and drank, and as the inner woman was recruited she felt a little
more charitable towards the world at large. At last she found words
to begin her story, and before she went to bed she had made a clean
breast of it and told everything--everything, that is, as to the
lovers she had rejected; of Mr. Arabin she said not a word.

"I know I was wrong," said she, speaking of the blow she had given to
Mr. Slope; "but I didn't know what he might do, and I had to protect
myself."

"He richly deserved it," said Mary.

"Deserved it!" said Eleanor, whose mind as regarded Mr. Slope was
almost bloodthirsty. "Had I stabbed him with a dagger, he would have
deserved it. But what will they say about it at Plumstead?"

"I don't think I should tell them," said Mary. Eleanor began to
think that she would not.

There could have been no kinder comforter than Mary Bold. There
was not the slightest dash of triumph about her when she heard of
the Stanhope scheme, nor did she allude to her former opinion when
Eleanor called her late friend Charlotte a base, designing woman.
She re-echoed all the abuse that was heaped on Mr. Slope's head and
never hinted that she had said as much before. "I told you so, I
told you so!" is the croak of a true Job's comforter. But Mary, when
she found her friend lying in her sorrow and scraping herself with
potsherds, forbore to argue and to exult. Eleanor acknowledged
the merit of the forbearance, and at length allowed herself to be
tranquilised.

On the next day she did not go out of the house. Barchester she
thought would be crowded with Stanhopes and Slopes; perhaps also
with Arabins and Grantlys. Indeed, there was hardly anyone among her
friends whom she could have met without some cause of uneasiness.

In the course of the afternoon she heard that the dean was dead, and
she also heard that Mr. Quiverful had been finally appointed to the
hospital.

In the evening her father came to her, and then the story, or as much
of it as she could bring herself to tell him, had to be repeated. He
was not in truth much surprised at Mr. Slope's effrontery, but he was
obliged to act as though he had been to save his daughter's feelings.
He was, however, anything but skilful in his deceit, and she saw
through it.

"I see," said she, "that you think it only in the common course of
things that Mr. Slope should have treated me in this way." She had
said nothing