“Are you quite sure it’s honest, Theodore?”
“My dear Sophia, what do you mean?” cried he, much astonished.
“Isn’t it a little underhand?”
Canon Spratte drew himself up and looked at his sister with some sternness.
“My dear, I do not wish to remind you that I am a clergyman, though occasionally you seem strangely oblivious of the fact. But I should like to point out to you that it’s unlikely, to say the least of it, that a man of my position in the Church should do anything dishonest or underhand.”
Lady Sophia, raising her eyebrows, smiled thinly.
“My dear brother, if as Vicar of St. Gregory’s and Canon of Tercanbury, and prospective Bishop of Barchester, you assure me that you are acting like a Christian and a gentleman—of course I haven’t the temerity to say anything further.”
“You may set your mind at rest,” he answered, with a little laugh of scorn, “you can be quite sure that whatever I do is right.”
VIII
TWO days after this Lady Sophia was sitting alone in the drawing-room when Mrs. Fitzherbert was shown in. At her heels walked Lord Spratte.