uppose Wentworth will mind,"
said the Rector, with a curious sense of superiority. He felt his own
magnanimous conduct at the moment almost as much as his wife had done,
and could not help regarding Carlingford Church as the gift-horse which
was not to be examined too closely in the mouth.

"No," said Mrs Morgan, not without a passing sensation of doubt on
this point; "if he had only been frank and explained everything, there
never could have been any mistake; but I am glad it has all happened,"
said the Rector's wife, with a little enthusiasm. "Oh, William, I have
been such a wretch--I have been thinking--but now you are heaping
coals of fire on his head," she cried, with a hysterical sound in her
throat. It was no matter to her that she herself scarcely knew what
she meant, and that the good Rector had not the faintest understanding
of it. She was so glad, that it was almost necessary to be guilty of
some extravagance by way of relieving her mind. "After all Mr Proctor's
care in fitting the furniture, you would not, of course, think of
removing it," said Mrs Morgan; "Mr Wentworth will take it as we did; and
as for Mrs Scarsfield, if you like her, William, you may be sure I
shall," the penitent wife said softly, in the flutter and tremor of her
agitation. As he saw himself reflected in her eyes, the Rector could not
but feel himself a superior person, elevated over other men's shoulders.
Such a sense of goodness promotes the amiability from which it springs.
The Rector kissed his wife as he got up from his seat beside her, and
once more smoothed down, with a touch which made her feel like a girl
again, her pretty brown hair.

"That is all settled satisfactorily," said Mr Morgan, "and now I must
go to my work again. I thought, if you approved of it, I would write
at once to Scarsfield, and also to Buller of All-Souls."

"Do," said the Rector's wife--and she too bestowed, in her middle-aged
way, a little caress, which was far from being unpleasant to the
sober-minded man. He went down-stairs in a more agreeable frame of
mind than he had known for a long time back. Not that he understood
why she had cried about it when he laid his intentions before her. Had
Mr Morgan been a Frenchman, he probably would have imagined his wife's
heart to be touched by the graces of the Perpetual Curate; but, being
an Englishman, and rather more certain, on the whole, of her than of
himself, it did not occur to him to speculate on the subj