own principles, the strong-minded
woman could not do otherwise. She threw herself into her arm-chair with
unnecessary force, and read over the letter which Miss Trench herself
had written. "It is difficult to think of any consolation in such a
bereavement," wrote Mr Shirley's niece; "but still it is a little
comfort to feel that I can throw myself on your sympathy, my dear and
kind friend." "Little calculating thing!" Miss Leonora said to herself
as she threw down the mournful epistle; and then she could not help
thinking again of Frank. To be sure, he was not of her way of thinking;
but when she remembered the "investigation" and its result, and the
secret romance involved in it, her Wentworth blood sent a thrill of
pride and pleasure through her veins. Miss Leonora, though she was
strong-minded, was still woman enough to perceive her nephew's motives
in his benevolence to Wodehouse; but these motives, which were strong
enough to make him endure so much annoyance, were not strong enough to
tempt him from Carlingford and his Perpetual Curacy, where his honour
and reputation, in the face of love and ambition, demanded that he
should remain. "It would be a pity to balk him in his self-sacrifice,"
she said to herself, with again a somewhat grim smile, and a comparison
not much to the advantage of Julia Trench and _her_ curate. She shut
herself up among her papers till luncheon, and only emerged with a
stormy front when that meal was on the table; during the progress of
which she snubbed everybody who ventured to speak to her, and spoke to
her nephew Frank as if he might have been suspected of designs upon the
plate-chest. Such were the unpleasant consequences of the struggle
between duty and inclination in the bosom of Miss Leonora; and, save for
other unforeseen events which decided the matter for her, it is not by
any means so certain as, judging from her character, it ought to have
been, that duty would have won the day.

CHAPTER XLII.

Frank Wentworth once more went up Grange Lane, a thoughtful and a sober
man. Exhilaration comes but by moments in the happiest of lives--and
already he began to remember how very little he had to be elated about,
and how entirely things remained as before. Even Lucy; her letter very
probably might be only an effusion of friendship; and at all events,
what could he say to her--what did he dare in honour say? And then his
mind went off to think of the two rectories, between which