rawley
should be received with lavish paternal embraces. The archdeacon had
kissed Grace once, and he felt that he could do so again without an
unpleasant strain upon his feelings.

"Say something to your father about the property after dinner," said
Mrs. Grantly to her son when they were alone together.

"About what property?"

"About this property, or any property; you know what I
mean;--something to show that you are interested about his affairs.
He is doing the best he can to make things right." After dinner, over
the claret, Mr. Thorne's terrible sin in reference to the trapping of
foxes was accordingly again brought up, and the archdeacon became
beautifully irate, and expressed his animosity,--which he did not in
the least feel,--against an old friend with an energy which would
have delighted his wife, if she could have heard him. "I shall tell
Thorne my mind, certainly. He and I are very old friends; we have
known each other all our lives; but I cannot put up with this kind
of thing,--and I will not. It's all because he's afraid of his own
gamekeeper." And yet the archdeacon had never ridden after a fox in
his life, and never meant to do so. Nor had he in truth been always
so very anxious that foxes should be found in his covers. That fox
which had been so fortunately trapped just outside the Plumstead
property afforded a most pleasant escape for the steam of his anger.
When he began to talk to his wife that evening about Mr. Thorne's
wicked gamekeeper, she was so sure that all was right, that she said
a word of her extreme desire to see Grace Crawley.

"If he is to marry her, we might as well have her over here," said
the archdeacon.

"That's just what I was thinking," said Mrs. Grantly. And thus things
at the rectory got themselves arranged.

On the Sunday morning the expected letter from Venice came to
hand, and was read on that morning very anxiously, not only by Mrs
Grantly and the major, but by the archdeacon also, in spite of the
sanctity of the day. Indeed the archdeacon had been very stoutly
anti-sabbatarial when the question of stopping the Sunday post to
Plumstead had been mooted in the village, giving those who on that
occasion were the special friends of the postman to understand that
he considered them to be numbskulls, and little better than idiots.
The postman, finding the parson to be against him, had seen that
there was no chance for him, and had allowed the matter to drop. Mrs
Arabin's