an interval of three months made it seem possible to face his

episcopalroutine again. It was only when he was back in his own
palace that the full weight of his domestic responsibilities in

the discussion of the course he had to take, became apparent.
Lady Ella met him with affection and solicitude.

"I was tired and mentally fagged," he said. "A day or so in
London had an effect of change."

She agreed that he looked much better, and remained for a
moment or so scrutinizing him with the faint anxiety of one

resolved to be completely helpful.
He regarded her with a renewed sense of her grace and dignity

and kindliness. She was wearing a grey dress of soft silky
material, touched with blue and covered with what seemed to him

very rich and beautiful lace; her hair flowed back very
graciously from her broad brow, and about her wrist and neck were

delicate lines of gold. She seemed tremendously at home and right
just where she was, in that big hospitable room, cultured but

Anglican, without pretensions or novelties, with a glow of bound
books, with the grand piano that Miriam, his third daughter, was

beginning to play so well, with the tea equipage of shining
silver and fine porcelain.

He sat down contentedly in the low armchair beside her.
It wasn't a setting that one would rashly destroy....

And that evening at dinner this sense of his home as a complex
of finely adjusted things not to be rashly disturbed was still

more in the mind of the bishop. At dinner he had all his
domesticities about him. It was the family time, from eight until

ten, at which latter hour he would usually go back from the
drawing-room to his study. He surveyed the table. Eleanor was at

home for a few days, looking a little thin and bright but very
keen and happy. She had taken a first in the first part of the

Moral Science Tripos, and she was working hard now for part two.
Clementina was to go back to Newnham with her next September. She

aspired to history. Miriam's bent was musical. She and Phoebe and
Daphne and Clementina were under the care of skilful Mademoiselle

Lafarge, most tactful of Protestant French-women, Protestant and
yet not too Protestant, one of those rare French Protestants in

whom a touch of Bergson and the Pasteur Monod
"scarce suspected, animates the whole."

And also they had lessons, so high are our modern standards of
education, from Mr. Blent, a brilliant young mathematician in

orders, who sat now next to Lady Ella. Mr. Whippham, the
chaplain, was at the bishop's right hand, ready for any chance of

making arrangements to clear off the small arrears of duty the
little holiday in London had accumulated. The bishop surveyed all

these bright young people between himself and the calm beauty of
his wife. He spoke first to one and then another upon the things

that interested them. It rejoiced his heart to be able to give
them education and opportunity, it pleased him to see them in

clothes that he knew were none the less expensive because of
their complete simplicity. Miriam and Mr. Blent wrangled

pleasantly about Debussy, and old Dunk waited as though in orders
of some rare and special sort that qualified him for this

service.
All these people, the bishop reflected, counted upon him that

this would go on....
Eleanor was answering some question of her mother's. They were

so oddly alike and so curiously different, and both in their
several ways so fine. Eleanor was dark like his own mother.

Perhaps she did a little lack Lady Ella's fine reserves; she
could express more, she could feel more acutely, she might easily

be very unhappy or very happy....
All these people counted on him. It was indeed acutely true, as

Likeman had said, that any sudden breach with his position would
be a breach of faith--so far as they were concerned.

And just then his eye fell upon the epergne, a very old and
beautiful piece of silver, that graced the dinner-table. It had

been given him, together with an episcopal ring, by his curates
and choristers at the Church of the Holy Innocents, when he

became bishop of Pinner. When they gave it him, had any one of
them dreamt that some day he might be moved to strike an

ungracious blow at the mother church that had reared them all?
It was his custom to join the family in the drawing-room after

dinner. To-night he was a little delayed by Whippham, with some
trivialities about next month's confirmations in Pringle and

Princhester. When he came in he found Miriam playing, and playing
very beautifully one of those later sonatas of Beethoven, he

could never remember whether it was Of. 109 or Of. 111, but he
knew that he liked it very much; it was solemn and sombre with

phases of indescribable sweetness--while Clementina, Daphne
and Mademoiselle Lafarge went on with their war knitting and

Phoebe and Mr. Blent bent their brows over chess. Eleanor was
reading the evening paper. Lady Ella sat on a high chair by the

coffee things, and he stood in the doorway surveying the peaceful
scene for a moment or so, before he went across the room and sat

down on the couch close to her.
"You look tired," she whispered softly.

"Worries."
"That Chasters case?"

"Things developing out of that. I must tell you later." It
would be, he felt, a good way of breaking the matter to her.

"Is the Chasters case coming on again, Daddy?" asked Eleanor.
He nodded.

"It's a pity," she said.
"What ?

"That he can't be left alone."
"It's Sir Reginald Phipps. The Church would be much more

tolerant if it wasn't for the House of Laymen. But they--they
feel they must do something."

He seized the opportunity of the music ceasing to get away from
the subject. "Miriam dear," he asked, raising his voice; "is that

109 or 111? I can never tell."
"That is always 111, Daddy," said Miriam. "It's the other one

is 109." And then evidently feeling that she had been pert:
"Would you like me to play you 109, Daddy?"

"I should love it, my dear." And he leant back and prepared to
listen in such a thorough way that Eleanor would have no chance

of discussing the Chasters' heresies. But this was interrupted by
the consummation of the coffee, and Mr. Blent, breaking a long

silence with "Mate in three, if I'm not mistaken," leapt to his
feet to be of service. Eleanor, with the rough seriousness of

youth, would not leave the Chasters case alone.
"But need you take action against Mr. Chasters?" she asked at

once.
"It's a very complicated subject, my dear," he said.

"His arguments?"
"The practical considerations."

"But what are practical considerations in such a case?"
"That's a post-graduate subject, Norah," her father said with a

smile and a sigh.
"But," began Eleanor, gathering fresh forces.

"Daddy is tired," Lady Ella intervened, patting him on the
head.

"Oh, terribly!--of that," he said, and so escaped Eleanor for
the evening.