There was, at any rate, no danger that the archdeacon would fraternize with Mr.Slope; but then he would recommend internecine war, public appeals, loud reproaches, and all the paraphernalia of open battle.

Now that alternative was hardly more to Mr.Harding's taste than the other.
When Mr.Harding reached the parsonage, he found that the archdeacon was out, and would not be home till dinnertime, so he began his complaint to his elder daughter.

Mrs.Grantly entertained quite as strong an antagonism to Mr.Slope as did her husband; she was also quite as alive to the necessity of combating the Proudie faction, of supporting the old church interest of the close, of keeping in her own set such of the loaves and fishes as duly belonged to it; and was quite as well prepared as her lord to carry on the battle without giving or taking quarter.

Not that she was a woman prone to quarrelling, or ill-inclined to live at peace with her clerical neighbours; but she felt, as did the archdeacon, that the presence of Mr.Slope in Barchester was an insult to everyone connected with the late bishop, and that his assumed dominion in the diocese was a spiritual injury to her husband.

Hitherto people had little guessed how bitter Mrs.Grantly could be.