the Tuesday morning Major Grantly received a very
short note from Miss Prettyman, telling him that she had done so.
"Dear Sir,--I think you will be very glad to learn that our friend
Miss Crawley went from us yesterday on a visit to her friend, Miss
Dale, at Allington.--Yours truly, Annabella Prettyman." The note said
no more than that. Major Grantly was glad to get it, obtaining from
it the satisfaction which a man always feels when he is presumed to
be concerned in the affairs of the lady with whom he is in love.
And he regarded Miss Prettyman with favourable eyes,--as a discreet
and friendly woman. Nevertheless, he was not altogether happy. The
very fact that Miss Prettyman should write to him on such a subject
made him feel that he was bound to Grace Crawley. He knew enough
of himself to be sure that he could not give her up without making
himself miserable. And yet, as regarded her father, things were going
from bad to worse. Everybody now said that the evidence was so strong
against Mr. Crawley as to leave hardly a doubt of his guilt. Even
the ladies in Silverbridge were beginning to give up his cause,
acknowledging that the money could not have come rightfully into his
hands, and excusing him on the plea of partial insanity. "He has
picked it up and put it by for months, and then thought that it was
his own." The ladies at Silverbridge could find nothing better to say
for him than that; and when young Mr. Walker remarked that such little
mistakes were the customary causes of men being taken to prison, the
ladies of Silverbridge did not know how to answer him. It had come to
be their opinion that Mr. Crawley was affected with a partial lunacy,
which ought to be forgiven in one to whom the world had been so
cruel; and when young Mr. Walker endeavoured to explain to them that
a man must be sane altogether or mad altogether, and that Mr. Crawley
must, if sane, be locked up as a thief, and if mad, locked up as a
madman, they sighed, and were convinced that until the world should
have been improved by a new infusion of romance, and a stronger
feeling of poetic justice, that Mr. John Walker was right.

And the result of this general opinion made its way out to Major
Grantly, and made its way, also, to the archdeacon at Plumstead. As
to the major, in giving him his due, it must be explained that the
more certain he became of the father's guilt, the more certain also
he became of the daughter's merits. It was very hard. T