He's all very well as a man and a
clergyman, but--pshaw! what's the good of arguing with a
pig-headed woman?"
This emphatic epithet had the result which was to be expected. The
debate became a scolding match, lasting well into the night. These
two persons were not only on ill-terms, they disliked each other
with the intensity which can only be engendered by thirty years of a
marriage such as, but for public opinion, would not have lasted
thirty weeks. Their reciprocal disgust was physical, mental, moral.
It could not be concealed from their friends; all Polterham smiled
over it; yet the Mumbrays were regarded as a centre of moral and
religious influence, a power against the encroaches of rationalism
and its attendant depravity. Neither of them could point to
dignified ancestry; by steady persistence in cant and snobbishness
--the genuine expression of their natures--they had pushed to a
prominent place, and feared nothing so much as depreciation in the
eyes of the townsfolk. Raglan and Serena were causing them no little
anxiety; both, though in different ways, might prove an occasion of
scandal. When Eustace Glazzard began to present himself at the
house, Mr. Mumbray welcomed the significant calls. From his point of
view, Serena could not do better than marry a man of honourable
name, who would remove her to London.
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