As soon as they were in the drawing–room Mrs Grantly found some excuse for sending her girls away, and then began her task. She knew well that she could exercise but very slight authority over her sister. Their various modes of life, and the distance between their residences, had prevented very close confidence. They had hardly lived together since Eleanor was a child. Eleanor had moreover, especially in latter years, resented in a quiet sort of way, the dictatorial authority which the archdeacon seemed to exercise over her father, and on this account had been unwilling to allow the archdeacon’s wife to exercise authority over herself.

‘You got a letter just before dinner, I believe,’ began the eldest sister.

Eleanor acknowledged that she had done so, and felt that she turned red as she acknowledged it. She would have given anything to have kept her colour, but the more she tried to do so, the more she signally failed.

‘Was it not from Mr Slope?’

Eleanor said that the letter was from Mr Slope.

‘Is he a regular correspondent of yours, Eleanor?’

‘Not exactly,’ said she, already beginning to feel angry at the cross–examination. She determined, and why it would be difficult to say, that nothing would induce her to tell her sister Susan what was the subject of the letter. Mrs Grantly, she knew, was instigated by the archdeacon, and she would not plead to any arraignment made against her by him.

‘But, Eleanor dear, why do you get letters from Mr Slope at all, knowing, as you do, he is a person so distasteful to papa, and to the archdeacon, and indeed to all your friends?’

‘In the first place, Susan, I don’t get letters from him; and in the next place, as Mr Slope wrote the one letter which I have got, and as I only received it, which I could not very well help doing, as papa handed it to me, I think you had better ask Mr Slope instead of me.’

‘What was the letter about, Eleanor?’

‘I cannot tell you,’ said she, ‘because it was confidential. It was on business respecting a third person.’

‘It was in no way personal to yourself, then?’

‘I won’t exactly say that, Susan,’ said she, getting more and more angry at her sister’s questions.

‘Well I must say it’s rather singular,’ said Mrs Grantly, affecting to laugh, ‘that a young lady in your position should receive a letter from an unmarried gentleman of which she will not tell the contents, and which she is ashamed to show her sister.’

‘I am not ashamed,’ said Eleanor, blazing up; ‘I am not ashamed of anything in the matter; only I do not choose to be cross–examined as to my letters by any one.’

‘Well, dear,’ said the other, ‘I cannot tell you that I do not think that Mr Slope a proper correspondent for you.’

‘If he be ever so improper, how can I help his having written to me? But you are all prejudiced against him to such an extent, that that which would be kind and generous in another man is odious and impudent in him. I hate a religion that teaches one to be so onesided to one’s charity.’

‘I am sorry, Eleanor, that you hate the religion you find here; but surely you should remember that in such matters the archdeacon must know more of the world than you do. I don’t ask you to respect or