If there are such men as Mr. Sowerby--"
"The blackness of his fault will not excuse mine." And then again he
sat silent, hiding his eyes, while his wife, sitting by him, held his
hand.
"Don't make yourself wretched, Mark. Matters will all come right yet.
It cannot be that the loss of a few hundred pounds should ruin you."
"It is not the money--it is not the money!"
"But you have done nothing wrong, Mark."
"How am I to go into the church, and take my place before them all,
when every one will know that bailiffs are in the house?" And then,
dropping his head on to the table, he sobbed aloud.
Mark Robarts's mistake had been mainly this,--he had thought to
touch pitch and not to be defiled. He, looking out from his pleasant
parsonage into the pleasant upper ranks of the world around him, had
seen that men and things in those quarters were very engaging. His
own parsonage, with his sweet wife, were exceedingly dear to him, and
Lady Lufton's affectionate friendship had its value; but were not
these things rather dull for one who had lived in the best sets at
Harrow and Oxford;--unless, indeed, he could supplement them with
some occasional bursts of more lively life? Cakes and ale were as
pleasant to his palate as to the palates of those with whom he had
formerly lived at college.
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