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.”