help taking the scenes of
this remote rural existence, which was quite new to him, as though they
were the scenes of some comedy of manners.

Presently, however, the vicar became aware that the passage of arms
between himself and his spouse was becoming just a little indecorous.
He got up with a 'Hem!' intended to put an end to it, and deposited his
cup.

'Well, my dear, have it as you please. It all comes of your
determination to have Mrs. Seaton. Why couldn't you just ask the
Leyburns and let us enjoy ourselves?'

With this final shaft he departed to see that Jane, the little maid whom
Sarah ordered about, had not, in cleaning the study for the evening's
festivities, put his last sermon into the waste-paper basket. His wife
looked after him with eyes that spoke unutterable things.

'You would never think,' she said in an agitated voice to young Elsmere,
'that I had consulted Mr. Thornburgh as to every invitation, that he
entirely agreed with me that one _must_ be civil to Mrs. Seaton,
considering that she can make anybody's life a burden to them about here
that isn't; but it's no use.'

And she fell back on her knitting with redoubled energy, her face full
of a half-tearful intensity of meaning. Robert Elsmere restrained a
strong inclination to laugh, and set himself instead to distract and
console her. He expressed sympathy with her difficulties, he talked to
her about her party, he got from her the names and histories of the
guests. How Miss Austenish it sounded: the managing rector's wife, her
still more managing old maid of a sister, the neighbouring clergyman who
played the flute, the local doctor, and a pretty daughter just
out--'Very pretty,' sighed Mrs. Thornburgh, who was now depressed all
round, 'but all flounces and frills and nothing to say'--and last of
all, those three sisters, the Leyburns, who seemed to be on a different
level, and whom he had heard mentioned so often since his arrival by
both husband and wife.

'Tell me about the Miss Leyburns,' he said presently. 'You and cousin
William seem to have a great affection for them. Do they live near?'

'Oh, quite close,' cried Mrs. Thornburgh, brightening at last, and like
a great general, leaving one scheme in ruins, only the more ardently to
take up another. 'There is the house,' and she pointed out Burwood among
its trees. Then with her eye eagerly fixed upon him, she fell into a
more or less incoherent account of her favourites. She laid on h