y no means wished to consult
Mr. Crawley on that matter. But nevertheless she swallowed down her
wrath.

"It is at any rate unbecoming in a clergyman," she said; "and as I
know that Mr. Robarts places a high value on your opinion, perhaps
you will not object to advise him to discontinue it. He might
possibly feel aggrieved were I to interfere personally on such a
question."

"I have no doubt he would," said Mr. Crawley. "It is not within a
woman's province to give counsel to a clergyman on such a subject,
unless she be very near and very dear to him--his wife, or mother, or
sister."

"As living in the same parish, you know, and being, perhaps--" the
leading person in it, and the one who naturally rules the others.
Those would have been the fitting words for the expression of her
ladyship's ideas; but she remembered herself, and did not use them.
She had made up her mind that, great as her influence ought to be,
she was not the proper person to speak to Mr. Robarts as to his
pernicious, unclerical habits, and she would not now depart from her
resolve by attempting to prove that she was the proper person.

"Yes," said Mr. Crawley, "just so. All that would entitle him to
offer you his counsel if he thought that your mode of life was such
as to require it, but could by no means justify you in addressing
yourself to him." This was very hard upon Lady Lufton. She was
endeavouring with all her woman's strength to do her best, and
endeavouring so to do it that the feelings of the sinner might be
spared; and yet the ghostly comforter whom she had evoked to her
aid, treated her as though she were arrogant and overbearing. She
acknowledged the weakness of her own position with reference to her
parish clergyman by calling in the aid of Mr. Crawley; and, under
such circumstances, he might, at any rate, have abstained from
throwing that weakness in her teeth.

"Well, sir; I hope my mode of life may not require it; but that is
not exactly to the point: what I wish to know is, whether you will
speak to Mr. Robarts?"

"Certainly I will," said he.

"Then I shall be much obliged to you. But, Mr. Crawley, pray--pray,
remember this: I would not on any account wish that you should be
harsh with him. He is an excellent young man, and--"

"Lady Lufton, if I do this, I can only do it in my own way, as best
I may, using such words as God may give me at the time. I hope that
I am harsh to no man; but it is worse than useless, in all c