have any
enduring effect. In one respect it was, perhaps, beneficial; Lady
Lufton was at once induced by it to make common cause with her own
clergyman, and thus the remembrance of Mr. Robarts's sins passed away
the quicker from the minds of the whole Framley Court household. And,
indeed, the county at large was not able to give to the matter that
undivided attention which would have been considered its due at
periods of no more than ordinary interest. At the present moment
preparations were being made for a general election, and although no
contest was to take place in the eastern division, a very violent
fight was being carried on in the west; and the circumstances of
that fight were so exciting that Mr. Robarts and his article were
forgotten before their time. An edict had gone forth from Gatherum
Castle directing that Mr. Sowerby should be turned out, and an
answering note of defiance had been sounded from Chaldicotes,
protesting on behalf of Mr. Sowerby, that the duke's behest would
not be obeyed.

There are two classes of persons in this realm who are
constitutionally inefficient to take any part in returning members
to Parliament--peers, namely, and women; and yet it was soon known
through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present
electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a
woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace
of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which
purchase--so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the
facts--would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants
obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. The duke was a supporter
of the gods, and therefore, so Mr. Fothergill hinted, his money had
been refused. Miss Dunstable was prepared to beard this ducal friend
of the gods in his own county, and therefore her money had been
taken. I am inclined, however, to think that Mr. Fothergill knew
nothing about it, and to opine that Miss Dunstable, in her eagerness
for victory, offered to the Crown more money than the property was
worth in the duke's opinion, and that the Crown took advantage of her
anxiety, to the manifest profit of the public at large. And it soon
became known also that Miss Dunstable was, in fact, the proprietor
of the whole Chaldicotes estate, and that in promoting the success
of Mr. Sowerby as a candidate for the county, she was standing by
her own tenant. It also became known, in th