heir nephew, was a
sufficiently real connection when you came to know it. That parish of
his own which Miss Wodehouse had wished him--which would free the young
clergyman from all trammels so far as his work was concerned; and would
enable him to marry, and do everything for him--it was in the power of
the Miss Wentworths to bestow; but they were Evangelical women, very
public-spirited, and thinking nothing of their nephew in comparison with
their duty; and he was at that time of life, and of that disposition,
which, for fear of being supposed to wish to deceive them, would rather
exaggerate and make a display of the difference of his own views. Not
for freedom, not for Lucy, would the Perpetual Curate temporise and
manage the matter; so the fact was that he stood at the present moment
in a very perilous predicament. But for this family living, which was,
with their mother's property, in the hands of her co-heiresses, the
three Miss Wentworths, young Frank Wentworth had not a chance of
preferment in the world; for the respectable Squire his father had
indulged in three wives and three families, and such a regiment of sons
that all his influence had been fully taxed to provide for them. Gerald,
the clergyman of the first lot, held the family living--not a very large
one--which belonged to the Wentworths; and Frank, who was of the second,
had been educated expressly with an eye to Skelmersdale, which belonged
to his aunts. How he came at the end to differ so completely from these
excellent ladies in his religious views is not our business just at
present; but in the mean time matters were in a very critical position.
The old incumbent of Skelmersdale was eighty, and had been ill all
winter; and if the Miss Wentworths were not satisfied somehow, it was
all over with their nephew's hopes.

Such were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he walked down Grange
Lane in the dark, past the tedious, unsympathetic line of garden-walls,
with the rain in his face. The evening's entertainment had stirred up a
great many dormant sentiments. His influence in Carlingford had been
ignored by this new-comer, who evidently thought he could do what he
liked without paying any attention to the Curate of St Roque's; and,
what was a great deal worse, he had found Lucy unapproachable, and had
realised, if not for the first time, still with more distinctness than
ever before, that she did not belong to him, and that he had no more
right than an