at college, and that the friendship had been maintained through life;—­though, from the peculiarity of Mr Crawley’s character, the two had not been much together of late years.  Seeing how things were going now, and hearing how pitiful was the plight in which Mr Crawley was placed, the dean would, no doubt, feel it to be his duty to hasten his return to England.  He was believed to be at this moment in Jerusalem, and it would be long before a letter could reach him; but there still wanted three months to the assizes, and his return might be probably effected before the end of February.

‘I was never so distressed in my life,’ Mark Robarts said to his wife.

‘And you think you have done no good?’

’Only this, that I have convinced myself that the poor man is to responsible for what he does, and that for her sake as well as for his own, some person should be enabled to interfere for his protection.’  Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also the message which Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon.  But they both agreed that that message need not be sent any further.

CHAPTER XXII

MAJOR GRANTLY AT HOME

Mrs Thorne had spoken very plainly in the advice which she had given to Major Grantly.  That had been Mrs Thorne’s advice; and though Major Grantly had no idea of making the journey so rapidly as the lady had proposed, still he thought that he would make it before long, and follow the advice in spirit if not to the letter.  Mrs Thorne had asked him if it was fair that the girl should be punished because of the father’s fault; and the idea had been sweet to him that the infliction or non-infliction of such punishment should be in his hands.  ’You go and ask her,’ Mrs Thorne had said.  Well;—­he would go and ask her.  If it should turn out at last that he had married the daughter of a thief, and that he was disinherited for doing so—­an arrangement of circumstances which had to teach himself to regard as very probable—­he would not love Grace the less on that account, or allow himself for one moment to repent what he had done.  As he thought of all this he became somewhat in love with a small income, and imagined to himself what honours would be done to him by the Mrs Thornes of the county, when they should come to know in what way he had sacrificed himself to his love.  Yes;—­they would go and live in Pau.  He thought Pau would do.  He would have enough income for that;—­and Edith would get lessons cheaply, and would learn to talk French fluently.  He certainly would do it.  He would go down to Allington, and ask Grace to be his wife; and bid her to understand that if she loved him she could not be justified in refusing him by the circumstances of her father’s position.