wife and daughters of calico in order to
send his male offspring to Oxford, can keep an independent spirit when he is
bent on dining with high discrimination, riding good horses, living generally in
the most luxuriant honey-blossomed clover - and all without working? Mr. Lush
had passed for a scholar once, and had still a sense of scholarship when he was
not trying to remember much of it; but the bachelors' and other arts which
soften manners are a time-honoured preparation for sinecures; and Lush's present
comfortable provision was as good as a sinecure in not requiring more than the
odour of departed learning. He was not unconscious of being held kickable, but
he preferred counting that estimate among the peculiarities of Grandcourt's
character, which made one of his incalculable moods or judgments as good as
another. Since in his own opinion he had never done a bad action, it did not
seem necessary to consider whether he should be likely to commit one if his love
of ease required it. Lush's love of ease was well satisfied at present, and if
his puddings were rolled towards him in the dust, he took the inside bits and
found them relishing.
    This morning, for example, though he had encountered more annoyance than
usual, he went to his private sitting-room and played a good hour on the
violoncello.
 

                                  Chapter XIII

 »Philistia, be thou glad of me!«
 
Grandcourt having made up his mind to marry Miss Harleth showed a power of
adapting means to ends. During the next fortnight there was hardly a day on
which by some arrangement or other he did not see her, or prove by emphatic
attentions that she occupied his thoughts. His cousin Mrs. Torrington was now
doing the honours of his house, so that Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen could be
invited to a large party at Diplow in which there were many witnesses how the
host distinguished the dowerless beauty, and showed no solicitude about the
heiress. The world - I mean Mr. Gascoigne and all the families worth speaking of
within visiting distance of Pennicote - felt an assurance on the subject which
in the Rector's mind converted itself into a resolution to do his duty by his
niece and see that the settlements were adequate. Indeed the wonder to him and
Mrs. Davilow was that the offer for which so many suitable occasions presented
themselves had not been already made; and in this wonder Grandcourt himself was
not without a share. When he had told his resolution to Lush he had thought that
the affair would be concluded more quickly, and to his own surprise he had
repeatedly promised himself