her words till the moment should come in which she would be driven by
her inner impulses to speak them forth with terrible strength. When
the breakfast was over, Mrs. Ray took her bonnet and started forth to
the parsonage.

I do not know that a widow, circumstanced as was Mrs. Ray, could do
better than go to her clergyman for advice, but nevertheless, when
she got to Mr. Comfort's gate she felt that the task of explaining
her purpose would not be without difficulty. It would be necessary to
tell everything; how Rachel had become suddenly an object of interest
to Mr. Luke Rowan, how Dorothea suspected terrible things, and how
Rachel was anxious for the world's vanities. The more she thought
over it, the more sure she felt that Mr. Comfort would put an embargo
upon the party. It seemed but yesterday that he had been telling
her, with all his pulpit unction, that the pleasures of this world
should never be allowed to creep near the heart. With doubting feet
and doubting heart she walked up to the parsonage door, and almost
immediately found herself in the presence of her husband's old
friend.

Whatever faults there might be in Mr. Comfort's character, he was at
any rate good-natured and patient. That he was sincere, too, no one
who knew him well had ever doubted,--sincere, that is, as far as his
intentions went. When he endeavoured to teach his flock that they
should despise money, he thought that he despised it himself. When
he told the little children that this world should be as nothing to
them, he did not remember that he himself enjoyed keenly the good
things of this world. If he had a fault it was perhaps this,--that he
was a hard man at a bargain. He liked to have all his temporalities,
and make them go as far as they could be stretched. There was the
less excuse for this, seeing that his children were well, and even
richly, settled in life, and that his wife, should she ever be left a
widow, would have ample provision for her few remaining years. He had
given his daughter a considerable fortune, without which perhaps the
Cornbury Grange people would not have welcomed her so kindly as they
had done, and now, as he was still growing rich, it was supposed that
he would leave her more.

He listened to Mrs. Ray with the greatest attention, having first
begged her to recruit her strength with a glass of wine. As she
continued to tell her story he interrupted her from time to time with
good-natured little words, and