I hope I may be allowed to assure your lordship, without any reference to my motives for keeping it, that I shall be very slow to give up a living in your lordship's diocese. As your letter to me is unofficial,--and I thank you heartily for sending it in such form,--I have ventured to reply in the same strain.
I am, my dear Lord Bishop, Your very faithful servant,
"There," said he, as he folded it, and handed it to his wife, "I shall never see the remainder of the series. I would give a shilling to know how the bishop gets out of it in writing to the Marquis, and half-a-crown to see the Marquis's rejoinder." The reader shall be troubled with neither, as he would hardly price them so high as did the Vicar. The bishop's letter really contained little beyond an assurance on his part that Mr. Fenwick had not meant anything wrong, and that the matter was one with which he, the bishop, had no concern; all which was worded with most complete episcopal courtesy. The rejoinder of the Marquis was long, elaborate, and very pompous. He did not exactly scold the bishop, but he expressed very plainly his opinion that the Church of England was going to the dogs, because a bishop had not the power of utterly abolishing any clergyman who might be guilty of an offence against so distinguished a person as the Marquis of Trowbridge.
But what was to be done about Carry Brattle? Mrs. Fenwick, when she had expressed her anger against the Marquis, was quite ready to own that the matter of Carry's position was to them of much greater moment than the wrath of the peer. How were they to put out their hands and save that brand from the burning? Fenwick, in his ill-considered zeal, suggested that she might be brought to the Vicarage; but his wife at once knew that such a step would be dangerous in every way. How could she live, and what would she do? And what would the other servants think of it?
"Why would the other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper place for her, but then her father was so dour a man.
"Upon my word," said the Vicar, "he is the only person in the world of whom I believe myself to be afraid. When I get at him I do not speak to him as I would to another; and of course he knows it."