d few months had been under Lord Aberdeen, with whom he
had been forced to retire. He was a younger son, and not possessed
of any large fortune. Politics, as a profession, was, therefore,
of importance to him. He had in early life married a sister of Mr.
Sowerby; and as the lady was some six or seven years older than
himself, and had brought with her but a scanty dowry, people thought
that in this matter Mr. Harold Smith had not been perspicacious.
Mr. Harold Smith was not personally a popular man with any party,
though some judged him to be eminently useful. He was laborious,
well-informed, and, on the whole, honest; but he was conceited,
long-winded, and pompous.

Mrs. Harold Smith was the very opposite of her lord. She was a
clever, bright woman, good-looking for her time of life--and she was
now over forty--with a keen sense of the value of all worldly things,
and a keen relish for all the world's pleasures. She was neither
laborious, nor well-informed, nor perhaps altogether honest--what
woman ever understood the necessity or recognized the advantage of
political honesty?--but then she was neither dull nor pompous, and
if she was conceited, she did not show it. She was a disappointed
woman, as regards her husband; seeing that she had married him on the
speculation that he would at once become politically important; and
as yet Mr. Smith had not quite fulfilled the prophecies of his early
life.

And Lady Lufton, when she spoke of the Chaldicotes set, distinctly
included, in her own mind, the Bishop of Barchester, and his wife
and daughter. Seeing that Bishop Proudie was, of course, a man much
addicted to religion and to religious thinking, and that Mr. Sowerby
himself had no peculiar religious sentiments whatever, there would
not at first sight appear to be ground for much intercourse, and
perhaps there was not much of such intercourse; but Mrs. Proudie
and Mrs. Harold Smith were firm friends of four or five years'
standing--ever since the Proudies came into the diocese; and
therefore the bishop was usually taken to Chaldicotes whenever Mrs.
Smith paid her brother a visit. Now Bishop Proudie was by no means
a High Church dignitary, and Lady Lufton had never forgiven him for
coming into that diocese. She had, instinctively, a high respect
for the episcopal office; but of Bishop Proudie himself she hardly
thought better than she did of Mr. Sowerby, or of that fabricator of
evil, the Duke of Omnium. Whenever Mr. Roba