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She was, however, quite ready to declare that Mr. Peacocke had no business to preach in that pulpit, and that something very disagreeable would come of it. Nor was this feeling altogether confined to Mrs. Stantiloup, though it had perhaps originated with what she had said among her own friends. "Don't you think it well you should know something of his life during these five years?"
"If you're agoing to do anything of that kind you'd better go and do it elsewhere," said the stranger. "Just so," said Lefroy. "That's what I was thinking myself." "But we are not going to do anything," said Mr. Peacocke. "I have not the slightest idea of shooting the gentleman; and he has just as little of shooting me."
Peacocke's as to have been aware from the first that no censure, no fault-finding, would be possible if the connection were to be maintained. Other ushers, other curates, he had occasionally scolded. He had been very careful never even to seem to scold Mr. Peacocke. Mr. Peacocke had been aware of it too, aware that he could not endure it, and aware also that the Doctor avoided any attempt at it.
I could make him understand how that photograph ain't worth nothing, and how I explained to you myself as the lady's righteous husband is all alive, keeping house on his own property down in Louisiana. Do you think we Lefroys hadn't any place beside Kilbrack among us?" "Certainly you are a liar," said Peacocke. "Very well. Prove it."
He said it might be bosh, but that even were he inclined to relax his own views, his wife would certainly not relax hers. So it came to pass that although the Doctor and Mr. Peacocke were really intimate, and that something of absolute friendship sprang up between the two ladies, when Mr. Peacocke had already been more than twelve months in Bowick neither had he nor Mrs.
As he did so he heard the wretch laughing loud at the excellence of his own joke. Before he made his journey back again to England he only once more saw Robert Lefroy. As he was seating himself in the railway car that was to take him to Buffalo the man came up to him with an affected look of solicitude. "Peacocke," he said, "there was only nine hundred dollars in that roll."
Being a good-natured woman, she told the whole story to Mrs. Wortle. "I would just as soon have offered the money to the Marchioness herself," said Mrs. Wortle, as she told it to her husband. "I would have done it a deal sooner," said the Doctor. "I am not in the least afraid of Lady Altamont; but I stand in awful dread of Mrs. Peacocke." Nevertheless Mrs.
Peacocke, he would have been quite willing to pass the matter over in silence among his friends; but as it was he could not afford to hide his own light under a bushel. He was being punished almost to the extent of ruin by the cruel injustice which had been done him by the evil tongue of Mrs. Stantiloup, and, as he thought, by the folly of the Bishop.
Peacocke did not actually read out loud the letter, which was full of such terms of affection as are common between man and wife, knowing that her title to be called a wife was not admitted by Mrs. Wortle; but she read much of it, and told all the circumstances as they were related. "Then," said Mrs. Wortle, "he certainly is no more."
It need hardly be said of him that the most of his time he spent with Mary; but he did manage to devote an hour or two to his old friend, the school-assistant. Mr. Peacocke told his whole story, and Carstairs, whose morals were perhaps not quite so strict as those of Mr. Puddicombe, gave him all his sympathy.
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