ry was at the time known to all
the aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten
by any of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of
the peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest
son of the Marquis of Hartletop,--than whom no English nobleman was
more puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars
and ribbons are any sign of puissance,--and she was now, herself,
Marchioness of Hartletop, with a little Lord Dumbello of her own. The
daughter's visits to the parsonage of her father were of necessity
rare, such necessity having come from her own altered sphere of life.
A Marchioness of Hartletop has special duties which will hardly
permit her to devote herself frequently to the humdrum society of a
clerical father and mother. That it would be so, father and mother
had understood when they sent the fortunate girl forth to a higher
world. But, now and again, since her August marriage, she had laid
her coroneted head upon one of the old rectory pillows for a night
or so, and, on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been loud in
praise of her condescension. Now it happened that when this second
and more aggravated blast of the evil wind reached the rectory,--the
renewed waft of the tidings as to Major Grantly's infatuation
regarding Miss Grace Crawley, which, on its renewal, seemed to bring
with it something of confirmation,--it chanced, I say, that at that
moment Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was gracing the paternal
mansion. It need hardly be said that the father was not slow to
invoke such a daughter's counsel, and such a sister's aid.

I am not quite sure that the mother would have been equally quick to
ask her daughter's advice, had she been left in the matter entirely
to her own propensities. Mrs. Grantly had ever loved her daughter
dearly, and had been very proud of that great success in life which
Griselda had achieved; but in late years, the child had become,
as a woman, separate from the mother, and there had arisen not
unnaturally, a break of that close confidence which in early years
had existed between them. Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was
more than ever a daughter of the archdeacon, even though he might
never see her. Nothing could rob him of the honour of such a
progeny,--nothing, even though there had been actual estrangement
between them. But it was not so with Mrs. Grantly. Griselda had done
very well, and Mrs. Grantl