Who happened to be a clergyman!  Malling had longed to ask Blandford Sikes a question—­who that clergyman was.  But he refrained.  To do so, would doubtless have seemed oddly inquisitive.  It was surely enough for him to know that the professor was busily at work in his peculiar way.  And Malling thought again of that “approach.”  Evidently the professor must be describing the curve he had spoken of.  When would he arrive at Henry Chichester?  There were moments when Malling felt irritated by Stepton’s silence.  That it was emulated by Marcus Harding, Lady Sophia, and Henry Chichester did not make matters easier for him.  However, he had deliberately chosen to put this strange affair into Stepton’s hands.  Stepton had shown no special alacrity with regard to the matter.  Malling felt that he could do nothing now but wait.

He waited.

Now and then rumors reached him of Marcus Harding’s fading powers, now and then he heard people discussing one of Henry Chichester’s “remarkable sermons,” now and then in society some feminine gossip murmuring that “Sophia Harding seems to be perfectly sick of that husband of hers.  She probably wishes now that she had taken all her people’s advice and refused him.  Of course if he had been made a bishop!”

The season ended.  Goodwood was over, and Malling went off to Munich and Bayreuth for music.  Then he made a walking-tour with friends in the Oberammergau district, and returned to England only when the ruddy banners of autumn were streaming over the land.

Still there was no communication from the professor.  Malling might of course have written to him or sought him.  He preferred to possess his soul in patience.  Stepton was an arbitrary personage, and the last man in the world to consent to a process of pumping.

Meanwhile Stepton had forgotten all about Malling.  He was full of work of various kinds, but the work that most interested him was connected with the reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph’s.  As Malling surmised, he had lost little time in beginning his “approach,” and that approach had been rather circuitous.  He had taken his own advice and studied the link.  This done, the intricate and fascinating subject of nervous dyspepsia had claimed his undivided attention.  When he had finished his prolonged interview with Blandford Sikes, sidling back to the waiting-room to gather up various impedimenta, he had encountered the unfortunate clergyman whom he had kept waiting.  Marcus Harding was the man.  They exchanged only a couple of words, but the sight of the flaccid bulk, the hanging cheeks and hands, the eyes in which dwelt a sort of faded despair, whipped up into keen alertness every faculty of the professor’s mind.  As he walked into Cavendish Square he muttered to himself: 

“I never saw a clergyman look more promising for investigation, by Jove!  Never!  There’s something in it.  Malling was not entirely wrong.  There’s certainly something in it.”