other. I am not so incredulous as you are. Perhaps I have studied
human nature a little more closely, and I know that error is always
fruitful;--that is my experience," said Mr Morgan. His wife did not say
anything in answer to this deliverance, but she lay in wait for the
Curate, as was natural, and had her revenge upon him as soon as his ill
fate prompted him to back the Rector out.

"I am afraid Mr Wentworth had always too much confidence in himself,"
said the unlucky individual who was destined to be scapegoat on this
occasion; "and as you very justly observe, one wrong act leads to
another. He has thrown himself among the bargemen on such an equal
footing that I daresay he has got to like that kind of society. I
shouldn't be surprised to find that Rosa Elsworthy suited him better
than a lady with refined tastes."

"Mr Wentworth is a gentleman," said the Rector's wife, with emphasis,
coming down upon the unhappy Leeson in full battle array. "I don't think
he would go into the poorest house, if it were even a bargeman's,
without the same respect of the privacy of the family as is customary
among--persons of our own class, Mr Leeson. I can't tell how wrong or
how foolish he may have been, of course--but that he couldn't behave to
anybody in a disrespectful manner, or show himself intrusive, or forget
the usages of good society," said Mrs Morgan, who was looking all the
time at the unfortunate Curate, "I am perfectly convinced."

It was this speech which made Mr Morgan "speak seriously," as he
called it, later the same night, to his wife, about her manner to poor
Leeson, who was totally extinguished, as was to be expected. Mrs
Morgan busied herself among her flowers all the evening, and could not
be caught to be admonished until it was time for prayers: so that it
was in the sacred retirement of her own chamber that the remonstrance
was delivered at last. The Rector said he was very sorry to find that
she still gave way to temper in a manner that was unbecoming in a
clergyman's wife; he was surprised, after all her experience, and the
way in which they had both been schooled in patience, to find she had
still to learn that lesson: upon which Mrs Morgan, who had been
thinking much on the subject, broke forth upon her husband in a manner
totally unprecedented, and which took the amazed Rector altogether by
surprise.

"Oh, William, if we had only forestalled the lesson, and been _less_
prudent!" she cried in a womanis