marry the daughter of a convicted thief! How would the Proudies rejoice
over him--the Proudies who had been crushed to the ground by the success
of the Hartletop alliance; and how would the low-church curates, who
swarmed in Barsetshire, gather together and scream in delight over his
dismay! 'But why should we say that he is guilty?' said Mrs Grantly.

'It hardly matters as far as we are concerned, whether they find him
guilty or not,' said the archdeacon; 'if Henry marries that girl my
heart will be broken.'

But perhaps to no one except the Crawleys themselves had the matter
caused so much terrible anxiety as to the archdeacon's son. He had told
his father that he had made an offer of marriage to Grace Crawley, and
he had told the truth. But there are perhaps few men who make such
offers in direct terms without having already said and done that which
makes such offers simply necessary as the final closing of an accepted
bargain. It was so at any rate between Major Grantly and Miss Crawley,
and Major Grantly acknowledged to himself that it was so. He
acknowledged also to himself that as regarded Grace herself he had no
wish to go back from his implied intentions. Nothing that either his
father or mother might say would shake him in that. But could it be his
duty to bind himself to the family of a convicted thief? Could it be
right that he should disgrace his father and his mother and his sister
and his one child by such a connexion? He had a man's heart, and the
poverty of the Crawleys caused him no solicitude. But he shrank from the
contamination of a prison.



CHAPTER VI