“She is giving you a good character.” She smiled at Mr Elliot, by way of offering consolation, and Fanny tossed out her next words in a sharper tone.
“Why? For supposing that incomes preclude souls? That’s the way with your clergymen. Rich people have pockets, but no souls; or if they do possess any poor shrivelled little things, they can be left to take care of themselves.”
“No, no, Lady Fanny,” protested her victim, pinker than ever. “You forget. They—they have other opportunities.”
“Do you mean being sat next to at dinner?” Her eyes smiled at him an invitation to say more, to use his; as he was silent, she drummed the table with impatient fingers, and dropped her voice. “What brought you to London?”
“There was—there is—question of a living.”
“Offered?”
“Yes.”
“And accepted?”
“I—I hardly know—I believe it may be.”
Silence. Then—