’Oh, ah! yes.  And he puts the nomination of St Ewold’s at your disposition.  I am sure I shall be delighted to institute so worthy a gentleman as Mr Crawley.’  Then the dean took his leave of the bishop—­as we will also.  Poor dear bishop!  I am inclined to think that he was right in his regrets as to the little parsonage.  Not that his failure at Barchester, and his present consciousness of lonely incompetence, were mainly due to any positive inefficiency on his own part.  He might have been a sufficiently good bishop, had it not been that Mrs Proudie was so much more a sufficiently good bishop’s wife.  We will now say farewell to him, with a hope that the lopped tree may yet become green again, and to some extent fruitful, although all its beautiful head and richness of waving foliage have been taken from it.

About a week after this Henry Grantly rode over from Cosby Lodge to Hogglestock.  It has just been said that though the assizes had passed by and though all question of Mr Crawley’s guilt was now set aside, no visitor had of late made his way over to Hogglestock.  I fancy that Grace Crawley forgot, in the fullness of her memory as to other things, that Mr Harding, of whose death she heard, had been her lover’s grandfather—­and that therefore there might possibly be some delay.  Had there been much said between the mother and the daughter about the lover, no doubt all this would have been explained; but Grace was very reticent, and there were other matters in the Hogglestock household which in those days occupied Mrs Crawley’s mind.  How were they again to begin life? for, in very truth, life as it had existed with them before, had been brought to an end.  But Grace remembered well the sort of compact which existed between her and her lover;—­the compact which had been made in very words between herself and her lover’s father.  Complete in her estimation as had been the heaven opened to her by Henry Grantly’s offer, she had refused it all—­lest she should bring disgrace upon him.  But the disgrace was not certain; and if her father should be made free from it, then—­then—­then Henry Grantly ought to come to her and be at her feet with all the expedition possible to him.  That was her reading of the compact.  She had once declared, when speaking of the possible disgrace which might attach itself to her family and to her name, that her poverty did not ‘signify a bit’.  She was not ashamed of her father—­only of the accusation against her father.  Therefore she had hurried home when that accusation was withdrawn, desirous that her lover should tell her of his love—­if he chose to repeat such telling—­amidst all the poor things of Hogglestock, and not among the chairs, and tables and good dinners of luxurious Framley.  Mrs Robarts had given a true interpretation to Lady Lufton of the haste which Grace had displayed.  But she need not have been in so great a hurry.  She had been at home already above a fortnight, and as yet he had made no sign.  At last she said