“Is Mr. Harding so very much changed?”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t notice it?”

“I never met him till within the last fortnight.”

“He’s transformed—­simply.  He might have risen to anything, with his energy, his ambition, and his connections.  And now!  But the worst of it is no one can make out why it is.  Even Sophia and Isinglass—­my husband, you know!—­haven’t an idea.  And it gets worse every day.  Last Sunday I hear his sermon was too awful, a mere muddle of adjectives, such as one hears in Hyde Park, I believe.  I never liked Marcus particularly.  I always thought him too autocratic, too determined to dominate.  He had that poor little Mr. Chichester—­his curate—­completely under his thumb.  Mr. Chichester couldn’t call his soul his own.  He worshiped Marcus.  But now they say even he is beginning to think that his god is of clay.  What can it be?  Do you think Marcus is losing his mind?”

“Oh, I should hope not,” returned Malling, vaguely.  “Has it been going on long?”

“Oh, for quite a time.  But it all seemed to come on gradually—­as things do, you know!  Poor Sophy has always adored him, and given way to him in everything.  In her eyes all that he does is right.  She never says a word, I believe, but she must be suffering the tortures of—­you know!  There’s Winnie Rufford coming in!  How astonishingly young she looks.  Were you at the Huntingham’s ball?  Well—­”

Lady Mansford twittered no more about the Harding menage.  But Malling felt that his visit had not been fruitless.

After the opera he went to a party in Grosvenor Street where again he managed to produce talk of the Hardings.  It seemed that Lady Mansford had not exaggerated very much.  Among those who knew the Hardings a change in the rector of St. Joseph’s had evidently been generally noticed.  Malling took in to supper a Mrs. Armitage, a great friend of Lady Sophia’s, and she made no secret of the fact that Lady Sophia was greatly distressed.

“I thought she would have been here to-night,” Mrs. Armitage said.  “But she isn’t.  I suppose she felt she couldn’t face it.  So many of his congregation are here, or so many who were in his congregation.”

“The church was crammed to the doors last Sunday week when he preached,” observed Malling.

“Was it?  Curiosity, I suppose.  It certainly can’t have been the intellectual merit of the sermon.  I heard it was quite deplorable.  But last Sunday’s, I was told, was worse still.  No continuity at all, and the church not full.  People say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who often preaches in the evening, is making a great effect, completely cutting out his rector.  And he used to be almost unbearably dull.”

“Will you have a quail?”

“Please.  You might give me two.  My doctor says if I sit up late—­thank you!”

“I’ve never heard Mr. Chichester preach,” said Malling.

“He seems to have come on marvelously, to be quite another man.”