Eleanor did drink it, and allowed herself to be persuaded. She ate and drank, and as the inner woman was recruited she felt a little more charitable towards the world at large. At last she found words to begin her story, and before she went to bed, she had made a clean breast of it and told everything—everything, that is, as to the lovers she had rejected: of Mr Arabin she said not a word.

‘I know I was wrong,’ said she, speaking of the blow she had given to Mr Slope; ‘but I didn’t know what he might do, and I had to protect myself.’

‘He richly deserved it,’ said Mary.

‘Deserved it!’ said Eleanor, whose mind as regarded Mr Slope was almost bloodthirsty. ‘Had I stabbed him with a dagger, he would have deserved it. But what will they say about it at Plumstead?’

‘I don’t think I should tell them,’ said Mary. Eleanor began to think that she would not.

There could have been no kinder comforter than Mary Bold. There was not the slightest dash of triumph about her when she heard of the Stanhope scheme, nor did she allude to her former opinion when Eleanor called her late friend Charlotte a base, designing woman. She re–echoed all the abuse that was heaped on Mr Slope’s head, and never hinted that she had said as much before. ‘I told you so! I told you so!’ is the croak of a true Job’s comforter. But Mary, when she found her friend lying in her sorrow and scraping herself with potsherds, forbore to argue and to exult. Eleanor acknowledged the merit of the forbearance, and at length allowed herself to be tranquillised.

On the next day she did not go out of the house. Barchester she thought would be crowded with Stanhopes and Slopes; perhaps also with Arabins and Grantlys. Indeed there was hardly any one among her friends whom she could have met, without some cause of uneasiness.

In the course of the afternoon she heard that the dean was dead; and she also heard that Mr Quiverful had been finally appointed to the hospital.

In the evening her father came to her, and then the story, or as much of it as she could bring herself to tell him, had to be repeated. He was not in truth much surprised at Mr Slope’s effrontery; but he was obliged to act as though he had been, to save his daughter’s feelings. He was, however, anything but skilful in his deceit, and she saw through it.

‘I see,’ said she, ‘that you think it only the common course of things that Mr Slope should have treated me in this way.’

She had said nothing to him about the embrace, nor yet of the way in which it had been met.

‘I do not think it at all strange,’ said he, ‘that any one should admire my Eleanor.’

‘It is strange to me,’ said she, ‘that any man should have so much audacity, without ever having received the slightest encouragement.’

To this Mr Harding answered nothing. With the archdeacon it would have been the text for a rejoinder, which would not have disgraced Bildad the Shuhite.

‘But you’ll tell the archdeacon,’ asked Mr Harding.

‘Tell him what?’ said she sharply.

‘Or Susan?’ continued Mr Harding. ‘You’ll tell Susan; you’ll let them know that they wronged you in supposing that this man’s addresses would be agreeable to you.’