oena, that just but Rhadamanthine goddess, whom we moderns
ordinarily call Punishment, or Nemesis when we wish to speak of her
goddess-ship, very seldom fails to catch a wicked man though she
have sometimes a lame foot of her own, and though the wicked man may
possibly get a start of her. In this instance the wicked man had been
our unfortunate friend Mark Robarts; wicked in that he had wittingly
touched pitch, gone to Gatherum Castle, ridden fast mares across the
country to Cobbold's Ashes, and fallen very imprudently among the
Tozers; and the instrument used by Nemesis was Mr. Tom Towers of the
_Jupiter_, than whom, in these our days, there is no deadlier scourge
in the hands of that goddess. In the first instance, however, I must
mention, though I will not relate, a little conversation which took
place between Lady Lufton and Mr. Robarts. That gentleman thought it
right to say a few words more to her ladyship respecting those money
transactions. He could not but feel, he said, that he had received
that prebendal stall from the hands of Mr. Sowerby; and under such
circumstances, considering all that had happened, he could not be
easy in his mind as long as he held it. What he was about to do
would, he was aware, delay considerably his final settlement with
Lord Lufton; but Lufton, he hoped, would pardon that, and agree with
him as to the propriety of what he was about to do.

On the first blush of the thing Lady Lufton did not quite go along
with him. Now that Lord Lufton was to marry the parson's sister it
might be well that the parson should be a dignitary of the Church;
and it might be well, also, that one so nearly connected with her son
should be comfortable in his money matters. There loomed, also, in
the future, some distant possibility of higher clerical honours for a
peer's brother-in-law; and the top rung of the ladder is always more
easily attained when a man has already ascended a step or two. But,
nevertheless, when the matter came to be fully explained to her, when
she saw clearly the circumstances under which the stall had been
conferred, she did agree that it had better be given up. And well
for both of them it was--well for them all at Framley--that this
conclusion had been reached before the scourge of Nemesis had fallen.
Nemesis, of course, declared that her scourge had produced the
resignation; but it was generally understood that this was a false
boast, for all clerical men at Barchester knew that