‘I may as well make a clean breast of it at once,’ said the major, smiling, ’and say outright that I have come here to request your permission and her father’s to ask her to be my wife.’  Then he was silent, and for a few moments neither Mr nor Mrs Crawley replied to him.  She looked at her husband, and he gazed at the fire, and the smile died away from the major’s face, as he watched the solemnity of them both.  There was something almost forbidding in the peculiar gravity of Mr Crawley’s countenance when, as at present, something operated within him to cause him to express dissent from any proposition that was made to him.  ’I do not know how far this may be altogether new to you, Mrs Crawley,’ said the major, waiting for a reply.

‘It is not new to me,’ said Mrs Crawley.

‘May I hope, then, that you will not disapprove?’

‘Sir,’ said Mr Crawley, ’I am so placed by the untoward circumstances of my life that I can hardly claim to exercise over my own daughter that authority which should belong to a parent.’

‘My dear, do not say that,’ said Mrs Crawley.

’But I do say it.  Within three weeks of this time I may be a prisoner, subject to the criminal laws of my country.  At this moment I am without power of earning bread for myself, or for my wife, or for my children.  Major Grantly, you have even now seen the departure of the gentleman who has been sent here to take my place in this parish.  I am, as it were, an outlaw here, and entitled neither to obedience nor respect from those who under other circumstances would be bound to give both.’

‘Major Grantly,’ said the poor woman, ’no husband or father in the county is more closely obeyed or more thoroughly respected and loved.’

‘I am sure of it,’ said the major.

‘All this, however, matters nothing,’ said Mr Crawley, ’and all speech on such homely matters would amount to an impertinence before you, sir, were it not that you have hinted at the purpose of connecting yourself at some future time with this unfortunate family.’

‘I meant to be plain-spoken, Mr Crawley.’

’I did not mean to insinuate, sir, that there was aught of reticence in your words, so contrived that you might fall back on the vagueness of your expression for protection, should you hereafter see fit to change your purpose.  I should have wronged you much by such a suggestion.  I rather was minded to make known to you that I—­or, I should rather say, we,’ and Mr Crawley pointed to his wife—­’shall not accept your plainness of speech as betokening aught beyond a conceived idea in furtherance of which you have thought it expedient to make certain inquiries.’

‘I don’t quite follow you,’ said the major.  ’But what I want you to do is to give me your consent to visit your daughter; and I want Mrs Crawley to write to Grace and tell her that it’s all right.’  Mrs Crawley was quite sure that it was all right, and was ready to sit down and write the letter that moment, if her husband would permit her to do so.