Mrs. Burton’s project, might, after all, be feasible; but then what if her husband should really be angry with her?  That was a misfortune which never yet had come upon her.

Chapter XXXIX

Showing Why Harry Clavering Was Wanted At The Rectory

The letter which had summoned harry to the parsonage had been from his mother, and had begged him to come to Clavering at once, as trouble had come upon them from an unexpected source.  His father had quarrelled with Mr. Saul.  The rector and the curate had had an interview, in which there had been high words, and Mr. Clavering had refused to see Mr. Saul again.  Fanny also was in great trouble—­and the parish was, as it were, in hot water.  Mrs. Clavering thought that Harry had better run down to Clavering, and see Mr. Saul.  Harry, not unwillingly, acceded to his mother’s request, much wondering at the source of this new misfortune.  As to Fanny, she, as he believed, had held out no encouragement to Mr. Saul’s overtures.  When Mr. Saul had proposed to her—­making that first offer of which Harry had been aware—­nothing could have been more steadfast than her rejection of the gentleman’s hand.  Harry had regarded Mr. Saul as little less than mad to think of such a thing, but, thinking of him as a man very different in his ways and feelings from other men, had believed that he might go on at Clavering comfortably as curate in spite of that little accident.  It appeared, however, that he was not going on comfortably; but Harry, when he left London, could not quite imagine how such violent discomfort should have arisen that the rector and the curate should be unable to meet each other.  If the reader will allow me, I will go back a little and explain this.

The reader already knows what Fanny’s brother did not know—­namely, that Mr. Saul had pressed his suit again, and had pressed it very strongly; and he also knows that Fanny’s reception of the second offer was very different from her reception of the first.  She had begun to doubt—­to doubt whether her first judgment as to Mr. Saul’s character had not been unjust—­to doubt whether, in addressing her, he was not right, seeing that his love for her was so strong—­to doubt whether she did not like him better than she had thought she did—­to doubt whether an engagement with a penniless curate was in truth a position utterly to be reprehended and avoided.  Young penniless curates must love somebody as well as young beneficed vicars and rectors.  And then Mr. Saul pleaded his cause so well!

She did not at once speak to her mother on the matter, and the fact that she had a secret made her very wretched.  She had left Mr. Saul in doubt, giving him no answer, and he had said that he would ask her again in a few days what was to be his fate.  She hardly knew how to tell her mother of this till she had told herself what were her own wishes.  She thoroughly desired to have her mother in her confidence, and promised herself that it should be so before Mr. Saul renewed his suit.  He was a man who was never hurried or impatient in his doings.  But Fanny put off the interview with her mother, and put off her own final resolution, till it was too late, and Mr. Saul came upon her again, when she was but ill prepared for him.