hip knew that Mark in his heart would enjoy a brush across
the country quite as well as he himself; and then what was the harm
of it? Lady Lufton's best aid had been in Mark's own conscience. He
had taken himself to task more than once, and had promised himself
that he would not become a sporting parson. Indeed, where would be
his hopes of ulterior promotion, if he allowed himself to degenerate
so far as that? It had been his intention, in reviewing what he
considered to be the necessary proprieties of clerical life, in
laying out his own future mode of living, to assume no peculiar
sacerdotal strictness; he would not be known as a denouncer of
dancing or of card-tables, of theatres or of novel-reading; he would
take the world around him as he found it, endeavouring by precept
and practice to lend a hand to the gradual amelioration which
Christianity is producing; but he would attempt no sudden or majestic
reforms. Cake and ale would still be popular, and ginger be hot in
the mouth, let him preach ever so--let him be never so solemn a
hermit; but a bright face, a true trusting heart, a strong arm, and
an humble mind, might do much in teaching those around him that men
may be gay and yet not profligate, that women may be devout and yet
not dead to the world.

Such had been his ideas as to his own future life; and though many
would think that, as a clergyman, he should have gone about his work
with more serious devotion of thought, nevertheless there was some
wisdom in them;--some folly also, undoubtedly, as appeared by the
troubles into which they led him. "I will not affect to think that
to be bad," said he to himself, "which in my heart of hearts does
not seem to be bad." And thus he resolved that he might live without
contamination among hunting squires. And then, being a man only too
prone by nature to do as others did around him, he found by degrees
that that could hardly be wrong for him which he admitted to be right
for others.

But still his conscience upbraided him, and he declared to himself
more than once that after this year he would hunt no more. And then
his own Fanny would look at him on his return home on those days in a
manner that cut him to the heart. She would say nothing to him. She
never inquired in a sneering tone, and with angry eyes, whether he
had enjoyed his day's sport: but when he spoke of it, she could not
answer him with enthusiasm; and in other matters which concerned him
she was always