ympathetic emotion.

Suddenly in the midst of her satisfaction she had a rude shock. What on
earth was the vicar doing? After they had got through better than anyone
could have hoped, thanks to a discreet silence and Sarah's makeshifts,
there was the master of the house pouring the whole tale of his wife's
aspirations and disappointment into Mrs. Seaton's ear! If it were ever
allowable to rush upon your husband at table and stop his mouth with a
dinner napkin, Mrs. Thornburgh could at this moment have performed such
a feat. She nodded and coughed and fidgeted in vain!

The vicar's confidences were the result of a fit of nervous
exasperation. Mrs. Seaton had just embarked upon an account of 'our
charming time with Lord Fleckwood.' Now Lord Fleckwood was a
distant cousin of Archdeacon Seaton, and the great magnate of the
neighborhood--not, however, a very respectable magnate. Mr. Thornburgh
had heard accounts of Lupton Castle from Mrs. Seaton on at least half
a dozen different occasions. Privately he believed them all to refer to
one visit, an event of immemorial antiquity periodically brought up
to date by Mrs. Seaton's imagination. But the vicar was a timid man,
without the courage of his opinions, and in his eagerness to stop the
flow of his neighbor's eloquence he could think of no better device,
or more suitable rival subject, than to plunge into the story of
the drunken carrier, and the pastry still reposing on the counter at
Randall's.

He blushed, good man, when he was well in it. His wife's horrified
countenance embarrassed him. But anything was better than Lord
Fleckwood. Mrs. Seaton listened to him with the slightest smile on her
formidable lip. The story was pleasing to her.

'At least, my dear sir,' she said when he paused, nodding her diademed
head with stately emphasis, 'Mrs. Thornburgh's inconvenience may have
one good result. You can now make an example of the carrier. It is our
special business, as my husband always says, who are in authority, to
bring their low vices home to these people.'

The vicar fidgeted in his chair. What ineptitude had he been guilty of
now! By way of avoiding Lord Fleckwood he might have started Mrs. Seaton
on teetotalism. Now if there was one topic on which this awe-inspiring
woman was more awe-inspiring than another it was on the topic of
teetotalism. The vicar had already felt himself a criminal as he drank
his modest glass of claret under her eye.

'Oh, the drunkennes