I know it
all."

"Well, what then?"

The doctor shook his head and put up his hands. He had nothing to
say; no proposition to make; no arrangement to suggest. The thing was
so, and he seemed to say that, as far as he was concerned, there was
an end of it.

The squire sat looking at him, hardly knowing how to proceed. It
seemed to him, that the fact of a young man and a young lady being in
love with each other was not a thing to be left to arrange itself,
particularly, seeing the rank of life in which they were placed. But
the doctor seemed to be of a different opinion.

"But, Dr Thorne, there is no man on God's earth who knows my affairs
as well as you do; and in knowing mine, you know Frank's. Do you
think it possible that they should marry each other?"

"Possible; yes, it is possible. You mean, will it be prudent?"

"Well, take it in that way; would it not be most imprudent?"

"At present, it certainly would be. I have never spoken to either of
them on the subject; but I presume they do not think of such a thing
for the present."

"But, doctor--" The squire was certainly taken aback by the coolness
of the doctor's manner. After all, he, the squire, was Mr Gresham
of Greshamsbury, generally acknowledged to be the first commoner in
Barsetshire; after all, Frank was his heir, and, in process of time,
he would be Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury. Crippled as the estate was,
there would be something left, and the rank at any rate remained. But
as to Mary, she was not even the doctor's daughter. She was not only
penniless, but nameless, fatherless, worse than motherless! It was
incredible that Dr Thorne, with his generally exalted ideas as to
family, should speak in this cold way as to a projected marriage
between the heir of Greshamsbury and his brother's bastard child!

"But, doctor," repeated the squire.

The doctor put one leg over the other, and began to rub his calf.
"Squire," said he. "I think I know all that you would say, all that
you mean. And you don't like to say it, because you would not wish to
pain me by alluding to Mary's birth."

"But, independently of that, what would they live on?" said the
squire, energetically. "Birth is a great thing, a very great thing.
You and I think exactly alike about that, so we need have no dispute.
You are quite as proud of Ullathorne as I am of Greshamsbury."

"I might be if it belonged to me."

"But you are. It is no use arguing. But, putting that aside
altogether