Lady Lufton had often heard her friend the archdeacon preach, and she knew well the high tone which he could take as the necessity of trusting our hopes for the future for all our true happiness; and yet she sympathised with him when he told her that he was broken-hearted because his son would take a step which might possibly interfere with his worldly prosperity.  Had the archdeacon been preaching about matrimony, he would have recommended young men, in taking wives to themselves, especially to look for young women who feared the Lord.  But in talking about his own son’s wife, no word as to her eligibility or non-eligibility in this respect escaped his lips.  Had he talked on the subject till nightfall no such word would have been spoken.  Had any friend of his own, man or woman, in discussing such a matter with him and asking his advice upon it, alluded to the fear of the Lord, the allusion would have been distasteful to him and would have smacked to his palate of hypocrisy.  Lady Lufton, who understood as well as any woman what it is to be ‘tiled’ with a friend, took all this in good part.  The archdeacon had spoken out of his heart what was in his heart.  One of his children had married a marquis.  Another might probably become a bishop—­perhaps an archbishop.  The third might be a county squire—­high among the county squires.  But he could only so become by walking warily;—­and now he was bent on marrying the penniless daughter of an impoverished half-mad country curate, who was about to be tried for stealing twenty pounds!  Lady Lufton, in spite of all her arguments, could not refuse her sympathy to her old friend.

‘After all, from what you say, I suppose they are not engaged.’

‘I do not know,’ said the archdeacon.  ‘I cannot tell!’

‘And what do you wish me to do?’

’Oh—­nothing.  I came over, as I said before, because I thought he was here.  I think it right, before he has absolutely committed himself, to take every means in my power to make him understand that I shall withdraw from him all pecuniary assistance—­now and for the future.’

‘My friend, that threat seems to me to be so terrible.’

‘It is the only power I have left to me.’

‘But you, who are so affectionate by nature, would never adhere to it.’

’I will try.  I will try my best to be firm.  I will at once put everything beyond my control after my death.’  The archdeacon, as he uttered these terrible words—­words which were awful to Lady Lufton’s ears—­resolved that he would endeavour to nurse his own wrath; but, at the same time, almost hated himself for his own pusillanimity, because he feared that his wrath would die away before he should have availed himself of its heat.

‘I would do nothing rash of that kind,’ said Lady Lufton.  ’Your object is to prevent the marriage—­not to punish him for it when once he has made it.’

‘He is not to have his own way in everything, Lady Lufton.’