Thomas Wingfold, Curate | Page 5

in part it was that her mouth had gathered that peevish and
wronged expression which tends to produce a moral nausea in the
beholder. If she had but known how much uglier in the eyes of her
fellow-mortals her own discontent made her, than the severest
operation of the laws of mortal decay could have done, she might have
tried to think less of her wrongs and more of her privileges. As it was,
her own face wronged her own heart, which was still womanly, and
capable of much pity--seldom exercised. Her husband had been dean of
Halystone, a man of insufficient weight of character to have the right
influence in the formation of his wife's. He had left her tolerably
comfortable as to circumstances, but childless. She loved Helen, whose
even imperturbability had by mere weight, as it might seem, gained
such a power over her that she was really mistress in the house without
either of them knowing it.
Naturally desirous of keeping Helen's fortune in the family, and having,
as I say, no son of her own, she had yet not far to look to find a cousin
capable, as she might well imagine, of rendering himself acceptable to
the heiress. He was the son of her younger sister, married, like herself,
to a dignitary of the Church, a canon of a northern cathedral. This youth,
therefore, Greorge Bascombe by name, whose visible calling at present
was to eat his way to the bar, she often invited to Glaston; and on this
Friday afternoon he was on his way from London to spend the Saturday
and Sunday with the two ladies. The cousins liked each other, had not

had more of each other's society than was favourable to their aunt's
designs, who was far too prudent to have made as yet any reference to
them, and stood altogether in as suitable a relative position for falling
in love with each other as Mrs. Ramshorn could well have desired. Her
chief, almost her only uneasiness, arose from the important and but too
evident fact, that Helen Lingard was not a girl of the sort to fall readily
in love. That, however, was of no consequence, provided it did not
come in the way of marrying her cousin, who, her aunt felt confident,
was better fitted to rouse her dormant affections than any other youth
she had ever seen, or was ever likely to see. Upon this occasion she had
asked Thomas Wingfold to meet him, partly with the design that he
should act as a foil to her nephew, partly in order to do her duty by the
church, to which she felt herself belong not as a lay member, but in
some undefined professional capacity, in virtue of her departed dean.
Wingfold had but lately come to the parish, and, as he was merely
curate, she had not been in haste to invite him. On the other hand, he
was the only clergyman officiating in the abbey church, which was
grand and old, with a miserable living and a non-resident rector. He, to
do him justice, paid nearly the amount of the tithes in salary to his
curate, and spent the rest on the church material, of which, for certain
reasons, he retained the incumbency, the presentation to which
belonged to his own family.
The curate presented himself at the dinner-hour in Mrs. Ramshorn's
drawing-room, looking like any other gentleman, satisfied with his
share in the administration of things, and affecting nothing of the
professional either in dress, manner, or tone. Helen saw him for the first
time in private life, and, as she had expected, saw nothing
remarkable--a man who looked about thirty, was a little over the middle
height, and well enough constructed as men go, had a good forehead, a
questionable nose, clear grey eyes, long, mobile, sensitive mouth, large
chin, pale complexion, and straight black hair, and might have been a
lawyer just as well as a clergyman. A keener, that is, a more interested
eye than hers, might have discovered traces of suffering in the forms of
the wrinkles which, as he talked, would now and then flit like ripples
over his forehead; but Helen's eyes seldom did more than slip over the
faces presented to her; and had it been otherwise, who could be

expected to pay much regard to Thomas Wingfold when George
Bascombe was present? There, indeed, stood a man by the corner of the
mantelpiece!--tall and handsome as an Apollo, and strong as the young
Hercules, dressed in the top of the plainest fashion, self-satisfied, but
not offensively so, good-natured, ready to smile, as clean in conscience,
apparently, and as large in sympathy, as his shirt-front. Everybody who
knew him, counted George Bascombe a genuine good fellow, and
George himself