A good time, indeed! with everything begun and nothing finished: with two households thrown into perturbation for a delusion, and a desirable marriage spoilt, all for want of a little common sense and plain speaking, which _one_ person at least in the valley could have supplied them with, had she not been ignored and browbeaten on all sides.

She contained herself, however, in his presence, but the vicar suffered proportionately in the privacy of the connubial chamber.

He had never seen his wife so exasperated.

To think what might have been--what she might have done for the race, but for the whims of two stuck-up, superior, impracticable young persons, that would neither manage their own affairs nor allow other people to manage them for them! The vicar behaved gallantly, kept the secret of Elsmere's remark to himself like a man, and allowed himself certain counsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs.Thornburgh into well-simulated slumber.

However, in the morning he was vaguely conscious that some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded of him peremptorily, 'When do you get back, William ?' To the best of his memory, the vicar had sleepily murmured, 'Thursday;' and had then heard, echoed through his dreams, a calculating whisper, 'He goes Saturday--one clear day!' The 'following morning was gloomy but fine, and after breakfast the vicar and Elsmere started off.