The next day was Tuesday, and Harry proposed to leave the rectory at ten o’clock for Mr. Saul’s lodgings.  Before he did so, he had a few words with his father who professed even deeper animosity against Mr. Saul than his son.  “After that,” he said, “I’ll believe that a girl may fall in love with any man!  People say all manner of things about the folly of girls; but nothing but this—­nothing short of this—­would have convinced me that it was possible that Fanny should have been such a fool.  An ape of a fellow—­not made like a man—­with a thin hatchet face, and unwholesome stubbly chin.  Good heavens!”

“He has talked her into it.”

“But he is such an ass.  As far as I know him, he can’t say Bo! to a goose.”

“There I think you are perhaps wrong.”

“Upon my word I’ve never been able to get a word from him except about the parish.  He is the most uncompanionable fellow.  There’s Edward Fielding is as active a clergyman as Saul; but Edward Fielding has something to say for himself.”

“Saul is a cleverer man than Edward is; but his cleverness is of a different sort.”

“It is of a sort that is very invisible to me.  But what does all that matter?  He hasn’t got a shilling.  When I was a curate, we didn’t think of doing such things as that.”  Mr. Clavering had only been a curate for twelve months, and during that time had become engaged to his present wife with the consent of every one concerned.  “But clergymen were gentlemen then.  I don’t know what the Church will come to; I don’t indeed.”

After this Harry went away upon his mission.  What a farce it was that he should be engaged to make straight the affairs of other people, when his own affairs were so very crooked!  As he walked up to the old farm-house in which Mr. Saul was living, he thought of this, and acknowledged to himself that he could hardly make himself in earnest about his sister’s affairs, because of his own troubles.  He tried to fill himself with a proper feeling of dignified wrath and high paternal indignation against the poor curate; but under it all, and at the back of it all, and in front of it all, there was ever present to him his own position.  Did he wish to escape from Lady Ongar; and if so, how was he to do it?  And if he did not escape from Lady Ongar, how was he ever to hold up his head again?

He had sent a note to Mr. Saul on the previous evening giving notice of his intended visit, and had received an answer, in which the curate had promised that he would be at home.  He had never been in Mr. Saul’s room, and as he entered it, felt more strongly than ever how incongruous was the idea of Mr. Saul as a suitor to his sister.  The Claverings had always had things comfortable around them.  They were a people who had ever lived on Brussels carpets, and had seated themselves in capacious chairs.  Ormolu, damask hangings, and Sevres china were not familiar to them; but they had never lacked anything that is