r. Peacocke will like to find that the clergymen from
his neighbourhood are standing with him." And so it was settled, that when
the day should come on which the Doctor would take Mrs. Peacocke up with
him to London, Mr. Puddicombe was to accompany them.

The Doctor when he left Mr. Puddicombe's parsonage had by no means pledged
himself not to send the letters. When a man has written a letter, and has
taken some trouble with it, and more specially when he has copied it
several times himself so as to have made many letters of it,--when he has
argued his point successfully to himself, and has triumphed in his own
mind, as was likely to be the case with Dr. Wortle in all that he did, he
does not like to make waste paper of his letters. As he rode home he
tried to persuade himself that he might yet use them. He could not quite
admit his friend's point. Mr. Peacocke, no doubt, had known his own
condition, and him a strict moralist might condemn. But he,--he,--Dr.
Wortle,--had known nothing. All that he had done was not to condemn the
other man when he did know!

Nevertheless as he rode into his own yard, he made up his mind that he
would burn the letters. He had shown them to no one else. He had not
even mentioned them to his wife. He could burn them without condemning
himself in the opinion of any one. And he burned them. When Mr.
Puddicombe found him at the station at Broughton as they were about to
proceed to London with Mrs. Peacocke, he simply whispered the fate of the
letters. "After what you said I destroyed what I had written."

"Perhaps it was as well," said Mr. Puddicombe.

When the telegram came to say that Mr. Peacocke was at Liverpool, Mrs.
Peacocke was anxious immediately to rush up to London. But she was
restrained by the Doctor,--or rather by Mrs. Wortle under the Doctor's
orders. "No, my dear; no. You must not go till all will be ready for you
to meet him in the church. The Doctor says so."

"Am I not to see him till he comes up to the altar?"

On this there was another consultation between Mrs. Wortle and the Doctor,
at which she explained how impossible it would be for the woman to go
through the ceremony with due serenity and propriety of manner unless she
should be first allowed to throw herself into his arms, and to welcome him
back to her. "Yes," she said, "he can come and see you at the hotel on
the evening before, and again in the morning,--so that if there be a word
to say you