The bishop was still thinking over this communication when he was interrupted by Lady Ella.  She came with a letter in her hand to ask him whether she might send five-and-twenty pounds to a poor cousin of his, a teacher in a girls’ school, who had been incapacitated from work by a dislocation of the cartilage of her knee.  If she could go to that unorthodox but successful practitioner, Mr. Barker, the bone-setter, she was convinced she could be restored to efficiency.  But she had no ready money.  The bishop agreed without hesitation.  His only doubt was the certainty of the cure, but upon that point Lady Ella was convinced; there had been a great experience in the Walshingham family.

“It is pleasant to be able to do things like this,” said Lady Ella, standing over him when this matter was settled.

“Yes,” the bishop agreed; “it is pleasant to be in a position to do things like this....”

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH — THE SECOND VISION

(1)

A month later found the bishop’s original state of perplexity and insomnia returned and intensified.  He had done none of all the things that had seemed so manifestly needing to be done after his vision in the Athenaeum.  All the relief and benefit of his experience in London had vanished out of his life.  He was afraid of Dr. Dale’s drug; he knew certainly that it would precipitate matters; and all his instincts in the state of moral enfeeblement to which he had relapsed, were to temporize.

Although he had said nothing further about his changed beliefs to Lady Ella, yet he perceived clearly that a shadow had fallen between them.  She had a wife’s extreme sensitiveness to fine shades of expression and bearing, and manifestly she knew that something was different.  Meanwhile Lady Sunderbund had become a frequent worshipper in the cathedral, she was a figure as conspicuous in sombre Princhester as a bird of paradise would have been; common people stood outside her very very rich blue door on the chance of seeing her; she never missed an opportunity of hearing the bishop preach or speak, she wrote him several long and thoughtful letters with which he did not bother Lady Ella, she communicated persistently, and manifestly intended to become a very active worker in diocesan affairs.

It was inevitable that she and the bishop should meet and talk occasionally in the cathedral precincts, and it was inevitable that he should contrast the flexibility of her rapid and very responsive mind with a certain defensiveness, a stoniness, in the intellectual bearing of Lady Ella.

If it had been Lady Sunderbund he had had to explain to, instead of Lady Ella, he could have explained a dozen times a day.

And since his mind was rehearsing explanations it was not unnatural they should overflow into this eagerly receptive channel, and that the less he told Lady Ella the fuller became his spiritual confidences to Lady Sunderbund.