r you, and the best thing for your mother."

It was at last decided that Grace should go to her friend at
Allington, and to Allington she went. She returned home for a day or
two, and was persuaded by her mother to accept the invitation that
had been given her. At Hogglestock, while she was there, new troubles
came up, of which something shall shortly be told; but they were
troubles in which Grace could give no assistance to her mother, and
which, indeed, though they were in truth troubles, as will be seen,
were so far beneficent that they stirred her father up to a certain
action which was in itself salutary. "I think it will be better that
you should be away, dearest," said her mother, who now, for the first
time, heard plainly all that poor Grace had to tell about Major
Grantly;--Grace having, heretofore, barely spoken, in most ambiguous
words, of Major Grantly as a gentleman whom she had met at Framley,
and whom she had described as being "very nice".

In old days, long ago, Lucy Robarts, the present Lady Lufton, sister
of the Rev. Mark Robarts, the parson of Framley, had sojourned
for a while under Mrs. Crawley's roof at Hogglestock. Peculiar
circumstances, which need not, perhaps, be told here, had given
occasion for the visit. She had then resolved,--for her future
destiny been known to her before she had left Mrs. Crawley's
house,--that she would in coming days do much to befriend the family
of her friend; but the doing of much had been very difficult. And
the doing of anything had come to be very difficult through a
certain indiscretion on Lord Lufton's part. Lord Lufton had offered
assistance, pecuniary assistance, to Mr. Crawley, which Mr. Crawley had
rejected with outspoken anger. What was Lord Lufton to him that his
lordship should dare to come to him with his paltry money in his
hand? But after a while, Lady Lufton, exercising some cunning in the
operations of her friendship, had persuaded her sister-in-law at the
Framley parsonage to have Grace Crawley over there as a visitor,--and
there she had been during the summer holidays previous to the
commencement of our story. And there, at Framley, she had become
acquainted with Major Grantly, who was staying with Lord Lufton at
Framley Court. She had then said something to her mother about Major
Grantly, something ambiguous, something about his being "very nice",
and the mother had thought how great was the pity that her daughter,
who was "nice" too in her es