st of it,--very
soft, admitted as it was throughout the county of Barsetshire,
that there was no family therein more widely awake to the affairs
generally of this world and the next combined, than the family of
which Archdeacon Grantly was the respected head and patriarch. Mrs
Walker, the most good-natured woman in Silverbridge, had acknowledged
to her daughter that she could not understand it,--that she could
not see anything at all in Grace Crawley. Mr. Walker had shrugged his
shoulders and expressed a confident belief that Major Grantly had
not a shilling of his own beyond his half-pay and his late wife's
fortune, which was only six thousand pounds. Others, who were
ill-natured, had declared that Grace Crawley was little better than a
beggar, and that she could not possibly have acquired the manners of
a gentlewoman. Fletcher the butcher had wondered whether the major
would pay his future father-in-law's debts; and Dr. Tempest, the
old Rector of Silverbridge, whose four daughters were all as yet
unmarried, had turned up his old nose, and had hinted that half-pay
majors did not get caught in marriage so easily as that.

Such and such like had been the expressions of the opinion of men
and women in Silverbridge. But the matter had been discussed further
afield than at Silverbridge, and had been allowed to intrude
itself as a most unwelcome subject into the family conclave of the
archdeacon's rectory. To those who have not as yet learned the fact
from the public character and well-appreciated reputation of the
man, let it be known that Archdeacon Grantly was at this time, as
he had been for many years previously, Archdeacon of Barchester and
Rector of Plumstead Episcopi. A rich and prosperous man he had ever
been,--though he also had had his sore troubles, as we all have,--his
having arisen chiefly from want of that higher ecclesiastical
promotion which his soul had coveted, and for which the whole tenour
of his life had especially fitted him. Now, in his green old age, he
had ceased to covet, but had not ceased to repine. He had ceased to
covet aught for himself, but still coveted much for his children; and
for him such a marriage as this which was now suggested for his son,
was encompassed almost with the bitterness of death. "I think it
would kill me," he said to his wife; "by heavens, I think it would be
my death!"

A daughter of the archdeacon had made a splendid matrimonial
alliance,--so splendid that its histo