Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

10 RAVENSHOE.
CHAPTER II.
SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE FOREGOING.
THE second Mrs. Ravenshoe was the handsome dowerless
daughter of a Worcester squire, of good standing, who, being
blessed with an extravagant son, and six handsome daughters,
had lived for several years abroad, finding society more accessible, and, consequently, the matrimonial chances of the " Petersham girls " proportionately greater than in England. She was
a handsome, proud woman, not particularly clever, or particularly
agreeable, or particularly anything, except particularly self-possessed. She had been long enough looking after an establishment
to know thoroughly the value of one, and had seen quite enough
of good houses to know that a house without a mistress was no
house at all. Accordingly, in a very few days the house felt her
presence, submitted with the best grace to her not unkindly rule,
and in a week they all felt as if she had been there for years.
Father Clifford, who longed only for peace, and was getting
very old, got very fond of her, heretic as she was. She, too, liked
the handsome, gentlemanly old man, and made herself agreeable
to him, as a woman of the world knows so well how to do.
Father Mackworth, on the other hand, his young coadjutor
since Father Dennis's death, an importation of Lady Alicia's
from Rome, very soon fell under her displeasure. The first
Sunday after her arrival, she drove to church, and occupied the
great old family pew, to the immense astonishment of the rustics,
and, after afternoon service, caught up the old vicar in her imperious off-hand way, and, will he nil he, carried him off to dinner
- at which meal he was horrified to find himself sitting with two
shaven priests, who talked Latin and crossed themselves. His
embarrassment was greatly increased by the behavior of Mrs.
Ravenshoe, who admired his sermon, and spoke on doctrinal
points with him as though there were not a priest within a mile.
Father Mackworth was imprudent enough to begin talking at
him, and at last said something unmistakably impertinent; upon
which Mrs. Ravenshoe put her glass in her eye, and favored him
with such a glance of haughty astonishment as silenced him at
once.
This was the beginning of hostilities between them, if one can
give the name of hostilities to a series of'infinitesimal annoyances on the one side, and to unmeasurable and barely con