wley, and he had told the truth. But there are perhaps few men who
make such offers in direct terms without having already said and done
that which make such offers simply necessary as the final closing of
an accepted bargain. It was so at any rate between Major Grantly and
Miss Crawley, and Major Grantly acknowledged to himself that it was
so. He acknowledged also to himself that as regarded Grace herself
he had no wish to go back from his implied intentions. Nothing that
either his father or mother might say would shake him in that. But
could it be his duty to bind himself to the family of a convicted
thief? Could it be right that he should disgrace his father and his
mother and his sister and his one child by such a connexion? He
had a man's heart, and the poverty of the Crawleys caused him no
solicitude. But he shrank from the contamination of a prison.

CHAPTER VI

Grace Crawley

It has already been said that Grace Crawley was at this time
living with the two Miss Prettymans, who kept a girls' school at
Silverbridge. Two more benignant ladies than the Miss Prettymans
never presided over such an establishment. The younger was fat,
and fresh, and fair, and seemed to be always running over with the
milk of human kindness. The other was very thin and very small, and
somewhat afflicted with bad health;--was weak, too, in the eyes, and
subject to racking headaches, so that it was considered generally
that she was unable to take much active part in the education of
the pupils. But it was considered as generally that she did all the
thinking, that she knew more than any other woman in Barsetshire, and
that all the Prettyman schemes for education emanated from her mind.
It was said, too, by those who knew them best, that her sister's
good-nature was as nothing to hers; that she was the most charitable,
the most loving, and the most conscientious of schoolmistresses.
This was Miss Annabella Prettyman, the elder; and perhaps it may be
inferred that some portion of her great character for virtue may have
been due to the fact that nobody ever saw her out of her own house.
She could not even go to church, because the open air brought on
neuralgia. She was therefore perhaps taken to be magnificent, partly
because she was unknown. Miss Anne Prettyman, the younger, went about
frequently to tea-parties,--would go, indeed, to any party to which
she might be invited; and was known to have a pleasant taste for
poundcake and