any one else but Mr. Creswell, it would not
have mattered one jot to the Rev. George
Benthall; but, as it happened, Mr. Benthall
had a certain amount of interest in the
doings of the household at Woolgreaves,
and the marriage of the chief of that household
promised to be an important event in
Mr. Benthall's life.

You could scarcely have found a greater
difference between any two men than
between James Ashurst and his successor.
When James Ashurst received his appointment
as head-master at Helmingham, he
looked upon that appointment as the
culmination of his career. Mr. Benthall
regarded the head-mastership as merely a
stepping-stone to something better. Mr.
Ashurst threw his whole soul into his
work. Mr. Benthall was content to get
people to think that he was very
hardworking and very much interested in his
duties, whereas he really cared nothing
about them, and slipped through them
in the most dilettante fashion. He did not
like work; he never had liked it. At
Oxford he had taken no honours, made
no name, and when he was nominated to
Helmingham, every one wondered at the
selection, except those who happened to
know that the fortunate man. was godson
to one of the two peers who were life-
governors of the school. Mr. Benthall
found the Helmingham school in excellent
order. The number of scholars never
had been so large, the social status of the
class which furnished them was undeniably
good, the discipline had been brought to
perfection, and the school had an excellent
name in the county. It had taken
James Ashurst years to effect this, but once
achieved there was no necessity for any
further striving. Mr. Benthall was a keen
man of the world, he found the machine in
full swing, he calculated that the impetus
which had been given to it would keep it
in full swing for two or three years, without
the necessity for the smallest exertion on
his part, and during these two or three
years he would occupy himself in looking
out for something better. What that
something better was to be he had not definitely
determined. Not another head-mastership,
he had made up his mind on that point; he
never had been particularly partial to boys,
and now he hated them. He did not like
parochial duty, he did not like anything
that gave him any trouble. He did like
croquet-playing and parsonical flirtation,
cricket and horse exercise. He liked
money, and all that money brings, and
after every consideration, he thought the
best and easiest plan to acquire it would be
to marry an heiress.

But there were no heiresses in those
parts, and very few marriageable girls. Mr.
Benthall had met the two young ladies
from Woolgreaves at several garden-parties,
and had conceived a special admiration
for Gertrude Creswell. Maud was far too
grand, and romantic, and self-willed for
his taste, but there was something in
Gertrude's fresh face and quaint simple
manner that was particularly pleasing to
him. But after making careful inquiries,
Mr. Benthall discovered that Miss Gertrude
Creswell's chance of wealth was but small,
she being entirely dependent on her uncle,
whose affections were known to be entirely
concentrated on his son. She might have
a few thousand pounds perhaps, bat a few
thousand pounds would not be sufficient to
enable Mr. Benthall to give up the school,
and to live idle for the rest of his life. The
notion must be given up, he feared. He
was very sorry for it, for he really liked
the girl very much, and he thought she
liked him. It was a bore, a nuisance, but
the other thing was impossible!

Then came Tom Creswell's death, and
that gave affairs another aspect. There
was no son now to inherit all the accumulated
wealth. There were only the two
nieces, between whom the bulk of the
property would doubtless be divided. That
was a much more healthy outlook for Mr.
Benthall. If matters eventuated as he
imagined, Miss Gertrude would not merely
have a sufficiency but would be an heiress;
and under this expectation Mr. Benthall,
who had not seen much of the young ladies
of Woolgreaves for some time, now took
every opportunity of throwing himself in
their way. These opportunities were
tolerably frequent, and Mr. Benthall availed
himself of them with such skill and success
that he had finally made up his mind to
propose for Gertrude Creswell's hand, with
the almost certainty of acceptance, when
the news came down to the village that
Mr. Creswell was going to be married to
Marian Ashurst. That was a tremendous
blow! From what Mr. Benthall had heard
about Miss Ashurst's character in the
village, there was little doubt in his mind that
she had deliberately planned this marriage
with a view to the acquisition of fortune
and position, and there was no doubt that
she would hold to both. The chance of
any inheritance for the girls was even
worse than it would have been if Tom had