she
would do so. And so he rambled about, and could do and think of
nothing. He was thoroughly uncomfortable, thoroughly ill at ease,
cross with himself and everybody else, and feeding in his heart on
animosity towards Mr. Slope. This was not as it should be, as he
knew and felt, but he could not help himself. In truth Mr. Arabin
was now in love with Mrs. Bold, though ignorant of the fact himself.
He was in love and, though forty years old, was in love without being
aware of it. He fumed and fretted and did not know what was the
matter, as a youth might do at one-and-twenty. And so having done no
good at St. Ewold's, he rode back much earlier than was usual with
him, instigated by some inward, unacknowledged hope that he might see
Mrs. Bold before she left.

Eleanor had not passed a pleasant morning. She was irritated with
everyone, and not least with herself. She felt that she had been
hardly used, but she felt also that she had not played her own cards
well. She should have held herself so far above suspicion as to have
received her sister's innuendoes and the archdeacon's lecture with
indifference. She had not done this, but had shown herself angry
and sore, and was now ashamed of her own petulance, yet unable to
discontinue it.

The greater part of the morning she had spent alone, but after awhile
her father joined her. He had fully made up his mind that, come what
come might, nothing should separate him from his younger daughter.
It was a hard task for him to reconcile himself to the idea of seeing
her at the head of Mr. Slope's table, but he got through it. Mr.
Slope, as he argued to himself, was a respectable man and a clergyman,
and he, as Eleanor's father, had no right even to endeavour to prevent
her from marrying such a one. He longed to tell her how he had
determined to prefer her to all the world, how he was prepared to
admit that she was not wrong, how thoroughly he differed from Dr.
Grantly; but he could not bring himself to mention Mr. Slope's name.
There was yet a chance that they were all wrong in their surmise, and
being thus in doubt, he could not bring himself to speak openly to her
on the subject.

He was sitting with her in the drawing-room, with his arm round her
waist, saying every now and then some little soft words of affection
and working hard with his imaginary fiddle-bow, when Mr. Arabin
entered the room. He immediately got up, and the two made some trite
remarks to each other, neither