be a favour to me." Robarts again walked up
and down the room for half a dozen times, trying to resolve what it
would most become him to do in the present emergency. If his name
were dragged before the courts,--if he should be shown up in the
public papers as having been engaged in accommodation bills, that
would certainly be ruinous to him. He had already learned from Lord
Lufton's innuendoes what he might expect to hear as the public
version of his share in these transactions! And then his wife,--how
would she bear such exposure? "I will meet Mr. Sowerby at your rooms
to-morrow, on one condition," he at last said.

"And what is that?"

"That I receive your positive assurance that I am not suspected
by you of having had any pecuniary interest whatever in any money
matters with Mr. Sowerby, either as concerns your affairs or those
of anybody else."

"I have never suspected you of any such thing. But I have thought
that you were compromised with him."

"And so I am--I am liable for these bills. But you ought to have
known, and do know, that I have never received a shilling on account
of such liability. I have endeavoured to oblige a man whom I regarded
first as your friend, and then as my own; and this has been the
result." Lord Lufton did at last give him the assurance that he
desired, as they sat with their heads together over one of the
coffee-room tables; and then Robarts promised that he would postpone
his return to Framley till the Saturday, so that he might meet
Sowerby at Lord Lufton's chambers in the Albany on the following
afternoon. As soon as this was arranged, Lord Lufton took his leave
and went his way.

After that poor Mark had a very uneasy night of it. It was clear
enough that Lord Lufton had thought, if he did not still think, that
the stall at Barchester was to be given as pecuniary recompense in
return for certain money accommodation to be afforded by the nominee
to the dispenser of this patronage. Nothing on earth could be worse
than this. In the first place it would be simony; and then it would
be simony beyond all description mean and simoniacal. The very
thought of it filled Mark's soul with horror and dismay. It might
be that Lord Lufton's suspicions were now at rest; but others would
think the same thing, and their suspicions it would be impossible to
allay; those others would consist of the outer world, which is always
so eager to gloat over the detected vice of a clergyman. And then
t