‘What has happened that you should speak like that?’ she said to him once.  ‘What has broken your heart?’

‘You,’ he replied.  ‘You; you have done it.’

‘Oh, Tom,’ she said, going back into the memory of very far distant days in her nomenclature, ’how can you speak to me so cruelly as that!  That it should come to that between you and me after all!’

‘Why did you not go away and leave me that day when I told you?’

’Did you ever know a woman who liked to be turned out of a room in her own house?’ said Mrs Proudie.  When Mrs Proudie had condescended so far as this, it must be admitted that in those days there was a great deal of trouble in the palace.

Mr Thumble, on the day before he went to Silverbridge, asked for an audience with the bishop in order that he might receive instructions.  He had been strictly desired to do this by Mrs Proudie, and had not dared to disobey her injunctions—­thinking, however, himself, that his doing so was inexpedient.  ’I have got nothing to say to you about it; not a word,’ said the bishop crossly.  ’I thought that perhaps you might like to see me before I started,’ pleaded Mr Thumble very humbly.  ’I don’t want to see you at all,’ said the bishop; ’you are going there to exercise your own judgment—­if you have got any; and you ought not to come to me.’  After that Mr Thumble began to think that Mrs Proudie was right, and that the bishop was near dissolution.

Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful went over to Silverbridge together in a gig, hired from the Dragon of Wantly—­as to the cost of which there arose among them a not unnatural apprehension which amounted to dismay.  ’I don’t mind it so much for once,’ said Mr Quiverful, ’but if many such meetings are necessary, I for one can’t afford it, and I won’t do it.  A man with my family can’t allow himself to be money out of pocket in that way.’  ‘It is hard,’ said Mr Thumble.  ’She ought to pay it herself, out of her own pocket,’ said Mr Quiverful.  He had had many concerns with the palace when Mrs Proudie was in the full swing of her dominion, and had not as yet begun to suspect that there might possibly be change.

Mr Oriel and Mr Robarts were already sitting with Dr Tempest when the other two clergymen were shown into the room.  When the first greetings were over luncheon was announced, and while they were eating not a word was said about Mr Crawley.  The ladies of the family were not present, and the five clergymen sat round the table alone.  It would have been difficult to have got together five gentlemen less likely to act with one mind and spirit;—­and perhaps it was all the better for Mr Crawley that it should be so.  Dr Tempest himself was a man peculiarly capable of exercising the function of a judge in the matter, had he sat alone as a judge; but he was one who would be almost sure to differ from others who sat as equal assessors with him.  Mr Oriel was a gentleman at all points; but he was very