d
be sought for from London, in the person of the great Sir Omicron
Pie.

Sir Omicron came, and Drs Fillgrave and Century were there to meet
him. When they all assembled in Lady Arabella's room, the poor
woman's heart almost sank within her,--as well it might, at such
a sight. If she could only reconcile it with her honour, her
consistency, with her high de Courcy principles, to send once more
for Dr Thorne. Oh, Frank! Frank! to what misery your disobedience
brought your mother!

Sir Omicron and the lesser provincial lights had their consultation,
and the lesser lights went their way to Barchester and Silverbridge,
leaving Sir Omicron to enjoy the hospitality of Greshamsbury.

"You should have Thorne back here, Mr Gresham," said Sir Omicron,
almost in a whisper, when they were quite alone. "Doctor Fillgrave
is a very good man, and so is Dr Century; very good, I am sure. But
Thorne has known her ladyship so long." And then, on the following
morning, Sir Omicron also went his way.

And then there was a scene between the squire and her ladyship. Lady
Arabella had given herself credit for great good generalship when she
found that the squire had been induced to take that pill. We have
all heard of the little end of the wedge, and we have most of us an
idea that the little end is the difficulty. That pill had been the
little end of Lady Arabella's wedge. Up to that period she had been
struggling in vain to make a severance between her husband and her
enemy. That pill should do the business. She well knew how to make
the most of it; to have it published in Greshamsbury that the squire
had put his gouty toe into Dr Fillgrave's hands; how to let it
be known--especially at that humble house in the corner of the
street--that Fillgrave's prescriptions now ran current through the
whole establishment. Dr Thorne did hear of it, and did suffer. He had
been a true friend to the squire, and he thought the squire should
have stood to him more staunchly.

"After all," said he himself, "perhaps it's as well--perhaps it will
be best that I should leave this place altogether." And then he
thought of Sir Roger and his will, and of Mary and her lover. And
then of Mary's birth, and of his own theoretical doctrines as to pure
blood. And so his troubles multiplied, and he saw no present daylight
through them.

Such had been the way in which Lady Arabella had got in the little
end of the wedge. And she would have triumphed joyfully had no