ven
slightly, sir," the Squire added, with irritation, as if Frank had
taken the part of the female members of the family, which indeed the
Curate had no thought of doing.

Miss Dora, for her part, having made this very successful diversion,
escaped to the house, and to her own room, where she indulged in a
headache all the afternoon, and certain tender recollections which
were a wonderful resource at all times to the soft-hearted woman. "Oh,
my dear boy, don't be over-persuaded," she had whispered into Frank's
ear as she left him; and her remonstrance, simple as it was, had no
doubt produced a considerable effect upon the mind of the Perpetual
Curate. He could not help thinking, as they emerged into the road,
that it was chiefly the impatient and undutiful who secured their
happiness. Those who were constant and patient, and able to deny
themselves, instead of being rewarded for their higher qualities,
were, on the contrary, put to the full test of the strength that was
in them; while those who would not wait attained what they wanted, and
on the whole, as to other matters, got on just as well as their
stronger-minded neighbours. This germ of thought, it may be supposed,
was stimulated into very warm life by the reflection that Lucy would
have to leave Carlingford with her sister, without any definite
prospect of returning again; and a certain flush of impatience came
over the young man, not unnatural in the circumstances. It seemed to
him that everybody else took their own way without waiting; and why
should it be so certain that he alone, whose "way" implied harm to no
one, should be the only man condemned to wait? Thus it will be seen
that the "just one thing" insisted on by Miss Dora was far from being
without effect on the mind of her nephew; upon whom, indeed, the
events of the morning had wrought various changes of sentiment. When
he walked up Grange Lane for the first time, it had been without any
acknowledged intention of opening his mind to Lucy, and yet he had
returned along the same prosaic and unsympathetic line of road her
accepted lover; her accepted lover, triumphant in that fact, but
without the least opening of any hope before him as to the conclusion
of the engagement, which prudence had no hand in making. Now the
footsteps of the Perpetual Curate fell firmly, not to say a little
impatiently, upon the road over which he had carried so many varying
thoughts. He was as penniless as ever, and as prospe