man should still have the power of persuading any
one,--astonishing also that any human being should continue to hate as she
hates me. She has often tried to do me an injury, but she has never
succeeded yet. At any rate she will not bend me. Though my school should
be broken up to-morrow, which I do not think probable, I should still have
enough to live upon,--which is more, by all accounts, than her unfortunate
husband can say for himself.

"The facts are these. More than twelve months ago I got an assistant
named Peacocke, a clergyman, an Oxford man, and formerly a Fellow of
Trinity;--a man quite superior to anything I have a right to expect in my
school. He had gone as a Classical Professor to a college in the United
States;--a rash thing to do, no doubt;--and had there married a widow,
which was rasher still. The lady came here with him and undertook the
charge of the school-house,--with a separate salary; and an admirable
person in the place she was. Then it turned out, as no doubt you have
heard, that her former husband was alive when they were married. They
ought probably to have separated, but they didn't. They came here
instead, and here they were followed by the brother of the husband,--who I
take it is now dead, though of that we know nothing certain.

"That he should have told me his position is more than any man has a right
to expect from another. Fortune had been most unkind to him, and for her
sake he was bound to do the best that he could with himself. I cannot
bring myself to be angry with him, though I cannot defend him by strict
laws of right and wrong. I have advised him to go back to America and
find out if the man be in truth dead. If so, let him come back and marry
the woman again before all the world. I shall be ready to marry them and
to ask him and her to my house afterwards.

"In the mean time what was to become of her? 'Let her go into lodgings,'
said the Bishop. Go to lodgings at Broughton! You know what sort of
lodgings she would get there among psalm-singing greengrocers who would
tell her of her misfortune every day of her life! I would not subject her
to the misery of going and seeking for a home. I told him, when I
persuaded him to go, that she should have the rooms they were then
occupying while he was away. In settling this, of course I had to make
arrangements for doing in our own establishment the work which had lately
fallen to her share. I mention this for th