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"Take care, Madeline," said he; and turning to the fat rector added, "just help me with a slight push."

The rector's weight was resting on the sofa, and unwittingly lent all its impetus to accelerate and increase the motion which Bertie intentionally originated. The sofa rushed from its moorings, and ran halfway into the middle of the room. Mrs. Proudie was standing with Mr. Slope in front of the Signora, and had been trying to be condescending and sociable; but she was not in the very best of tempers; for she found that, whenever she spoke to the lady, the lady replied by speaking to Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope was a favorite, no doubt; but Mrs. Proudie had no idea of being less thought of than the chaplain. She was beginning to be stately, stiff, and offended when unfortunately the castor of the sofa caught itself in her lace train, and carried away there is no saying how much of her garniture. Gathers were heard to go, stitches to crack, plaits to fly open, flounces were seen to fall, and breadths to expose themselves. A long ruin of rent lace disfigured the carpet, and still clung to the vile wheel on which the sofa moved.

We know what was the wrath of Juno when her beauty was despised. We know to what storms of passion even celestial minds can yield. As Juno may have looked at Paris on Mount Ida, so did Mrs. Proudie look on Ethelbert Stanhope when he pushed the leg of the sofa into her lace train.

"Oh, you idiot, Bertie!" said the Signora, seeing what had been done, and what were to be the consequences.

"Idiot!" reëchoed Mrs. Proudie, as though the word were not half strong enough to express the required meaning; "I'll let him know; " and then looking round to learn, at a glance, the worst, she saw that at present it behooved her to collect the scattered débris of her dress.

Bertie, when he saw what he had done, rushed over the sofa, and threw himself on one knee before the offended lady. His object, doubtless, was to liberate the torn lace from the castor; but he looked as though he were imploring pardon from a goddess.

"Unhand it, sir!" said Mrs. Proudie. From what scrap of dramatic poetry she had extracted the word cannot be said; but it must have rested on her memory, and now seemed opportunely dignified for the occasion.

"I'll fly to the looms of the fairies to repair the damage, if you'll only forgive me," said Ethelbert, still on his knees.

"Unhand it, sir!" said Mrs. Proudie, with redoubled emphasis and all but furious wrath. This allusion to the fairies was a direct mockery, and intended to turn her into ridicule. So at least it seemed to her. "Unhand it, sir!" she almost screamed.

"It's not me; it's the cursed sofa," said Bertie, looking imploringly in her face, and holding up both his hands to show that he was not touching her belongings, but still remaining on his knees.

Hereupon the Signora laughed; not loud, indeed, but yet audibly. And as the tigress bereft of her young will turn with equal anger on any within reach, so did Mrs. Proudie turn upon her female guest.

"Madam!" she said, and it is beyond the power of prose to tell of the fire which flashed from her eyes.

The Signora stared her full in the face for a moment, and then turning to her brother said playfully, "Bertie, you idiot, get up."

By this time the bishop, and Mr. Slope, and her three daughters were around her, and had collected together the wide ruins of her magnificence. The girls fell into circular rank behind their mother, and thus following her and carrying out the fragments, they left the reception rooms in a manner not altogether devoid of dignity. Mrs. Proudie had to retire and rearray herself.

As soon as the constellation had swept by, Ethelbert rose from his knees, and turning with mock anger to the fat rector, said: "After all, it was your doing, sir not mine. But perhaps you are waiting for preferment, and so I bore it."

Whereupon there was a laugh against the fat rector, in which both the bishop and the chaplain joined; and thus things got themselves again into order.

"Oh my lord, I am so sorry for this accident," said the Signora, putting out her hand so as to force the bishop to take it. "My brother is so thoughtless. Pray sit down, and let me have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. Though I am so poor a creature as to want a sofa, I am not so selfish as to require it all." Madeline could always dispose herself so as to make room for a gentleman, though, as she declared, the crinoline of her lady friends was much too bulky to be so accommodated.

"It was solely for the pleasure of meeting you that I have

had myself dragged here," she continued. "Of course, with your occupation, one cannot even hope that you should have time to come to us; that is, in the way of calling. And at your English dinner parties all is so dull and so stately. Do you know, my lord, that in coming to England my only consolation has been the thought that I should know you." And she looked at him with the look of a she-devil.

The bishop, however, thought that she looked very like an angel, and, accepting the proffered seat, sat down beside her. He uttered some platitude as to his deep obligation for the trouble she had taken, and wondered more and more who she

was.

"Of course you know my sad story?" she continued. The bishop didn't know a word of it. He knew, however, or thought he knew, that she couldn't walk into a room like other people, and so made the most of that. He put on a look of ineffable distress, and said that he was aware how God had afflicted her.

The Signora just touched the corner of her eyes with the most lovely of pocket handkerchiefs. Yes, she said, she had been sorely tried, — tried, she thought, beyond the common endurance of humanity; but while her child was left to her, everything was left. "Oh! my lord!" she exclaimed, "you must see that infant, the last bud of a wondrous tree. You must let a mother hope that you will lay your holy hands on her innocent head, and consecrate her for female virtues. May I hope it?" said she, looking into the bishop's eye, and touching the bishop's arm with her hand.

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The bishop was but a man, and said she might. After all, what was it but a request that he would confirm her daughter? -a request, indeed, very unnecessary to make, as he should do so as a matter of course, if the young lady came forward in the usual way.

"The blood of Tiberius," said the Signora, in all but a whisper; "the blood of Tiberius flows in her veins. She is the last of the Neros!"

The bishop had heard of the last of the Visigoths, and had floating in his brain some indistinct idea of the last of the Mohicans, but to have the last of the Neros thus brought before him for a blessing was very staggering. Still he liked the lady. She had a proper way of thinking, and talked with more propriety than her brother. But who were they? It

was now quite clear that that blue madman with the silky beard was not a Prince Vicinironi. The lady was married, and was of course one of the Vicinironis by right of the husband. So the bishop went on learning.

"When will you see her?" said the Signora, with a start. "See whom?" said the bishop.

"My child," said the mother.

"What is the young lady's age?" asked the bishop. "She is just seven," said the Signora.

"Oh," said the bishop, shaking his head, "she is much too young; very much too young.

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"But in sunny Italy, you know, we do not count by years," and the Signora gave the bishop one of her very sweetest smiles.

"But, indeed, she is a great deal too young," persisted the bishop; 66 we never confirm before

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"But you might speak to her; you might let her hear from your consecrated lips that she is not a castaway because she is a Roman; that she may be a Nero and yet a Christian; that she may owe her black locks and dark cheeks to the blood of the pagan Cæsars, and yet herself be a child of grace. You will tell her this, won't you, my friend?"

The friend said he would, and asked if the child could say her catechism.

"No," said the Signora, "I would not allow her to learn lessons such as those in a land ridden over by priests, and polluted by the idolatry of Rome. It is here, here in Barchester, that she must first be taught to lisp those holy words. Oh, that you could be her instructor!"

Now, Dr. Proudie certainly liked the lady, but, seeing that he was a bishop, it was not probable that he was going to instruct a little girl in the first rudiments of her catechism! he said he'd send a teacher.

"But you'll see her yourself, my lord?"

So

The bishop said he would, but where should he call? "At papa's house," said the Signora, with an air of some little surprise at the question.

The bishop actually wanted the courage to ask her who was her papa; so he was forced at last to leave her without fathoming the mystery. Mrs. Proudie, in her second best, had now returned to the rooms, and her husband thought it as well that he should not remain in too close conversation with the lady

VOL. XXVI.-6

whom his wife appeared to hold in such slight esteem. Pres. ently he came across his youngest daughter.

"Netta," said he, "do you know who is the father of Signora Vicinironi ?”

"It isn't Vicinironi, papa," said Netta; "but Vesey Neroni, and she's Dr. Stanhope's daughter. But I must go and do the civil to Griselda Grantly; I declare, nobody has spoken a word to the poor girl this evening."

Dr. Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope! Dr. Vesey Stanhope's daughter, of whose marriage with a dissolute Italian scamp he now remembered to have heard something! And that impertinent blue cub who had examined him as to his Episcopal bearings was old Stanhope's son, and the lady who had entreated him to come and teach her child the catechism was old Stanhope's daughter! the daughter of one of his own prebendaries! As these things flashed across his mind, he was nearly as angry as his wife had been. Nevertheless, he could not but own that the mother of the last of the Neros was an agreeable woman.

Mr. Slope in the mean time had taken the seat which the bishop had vacated on the Signora's sofa, and remained with that lady till it was time to marshal the folks to supper. Not with contented eyes had Mrs. Proudie seen this. Had not this woman laughed at her distress, and had not Mr. Slope heard it? Was she not an intriguing Italian woman, half wife and half not, full of affectation, airs, and impudence? she not horribly bedizened with velvet and pearls, with velvet and pearls, too, which had not been torn off her back? Above all, did she not pretend to be more beautiful than her neighbors? To say that Mrs. Proudie was jealous would give a wrong idea of her feelings. She had not the slightest desire that Mr. Slope should be in love with herself. But she desired the incense of Mr. Slope's spiritual and temporal services, and did not choose that they should be turned out of their course to such an object as Signora Neroni. She considered also that Mr. Slope ought in duty to hate the Signora; and it appeared from his manner that he was very far from hating her.

"Come, Mr. Slope," she said, sweeping by, and looking all that she felt, "can't you make yourself useful? Do Do pray take Mrs. Grantly down to supper."

Mrs. Grantly heard and escaped. The words were hardly

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