Sensational as this story line was, the novel appears to move rather slowly. All plot lines revolve around Mister Fenwick, the vicar. He and his wife encourage their house guest, Mary Lowther, to accept the suit of Mr. Fenwick's best friend, Harry Gilmore. She doesn't love him; she refuses him and shortly after falls in love with her cousin Walter Marrable. She accepts his proposal, but they jointly agree to call it off when his prospects in life are ruined by his father's reckless wasting of Walter's inheritance. Against her better judgment she accepts Mr. Gilmore. Then Walter's prospects for an inheritance improve. So she breaks her engagement to Mr. Gilmore and resumes that with Captain Marrable. Like Alice Vavasor in _Can You Forgive Her?_ she becomes a double jilt, and she is roundly criticized by many for such grievous behavior. Perhaps the most entertaining of the story lines is a church issue reminiscent of the Barsetshire novels. Mister Fenwick is insulted by the great landowner of the county, The Marquis of Trowbridge, and he succeeds in repaying the Marquis with more insults. Here Trollope's familiarity with church sensitivities brings us the Marquis's revenge: he allows a Methodist chapel (not a regular Wesleyan Methodist chapel, but a Primitive Methodist chapel) to be built across the road from the vicarage, where its ugly red bricks and loud discordant bells are a recurring nuisance to the vicar and his wife. But then: the vicar decides to consider the chapel to be his hair shirt, and he obtains the promise of his wife (who will never open her front door to look at the chapel) not to mention it to him again. The vicar considers the matter closed; but his wife's sister visits with her husband, a distinguished barrister, who volunteers to investigate the matter. He discovers that the land on which the chapel is being built is glebe land! (Glebe land is that which belongs to the vicar for his personal farming or gardening.) And here the vicar refuses to shed his hair shirt. His clerical mind allows him to demonstrate his virtue by tolerating the chapel, though his poor wife may be obliged to endure the sight and sounds of it without being allowed to complain to him. But the perpetrator of the chapel is not to be spared, and the vicar writes a stinging letter to the marquis, in which he explains the use of very strong words: He showed the letter to his wife. "Isn't malice a very strong word?" she said. "I hope so," answered the vicar. The pace of the gentle life in Victorian England was surely a leisurely one. This pace is reflected in the whole page that is given to the thoughts of the Marquis of Trowbridge when he receives the insulting letter from Mr. Fenwick; and his reflections are further supplemented by the author's reminding us, if it were not already evident, that the Marquis is an old fool: