“I did, Monsignor.”

“Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr. Curphy to important affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred duties?”

“I knew that too, Monsignor.”

“Then,” said the Bishop, pointing at me, “how dare you bring this man here—­this man of all others, who has been the chief instrument in bringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend and his deeply injured family?”

“So that’s how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?”

“Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest of my Church who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with notorious sinners as to see things in any other light.”

“Sinners, Bishop?”

“Didn’t you hear me, Father Donovan?  Or do you desire me to use a harder name for them—­for one of them in particular, on whom you have wasted so much weak sentimentality, to the injury of your spiritual influence and the demoralisation of your parish.  I have warned you already.  Do you wish me to go further, to remove you from your Presbytery, or perhaps report your conduct to those who have power to take the frock off your back?  What standard of sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony do you expect to maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with a woman who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . .  I grieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the poor wreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . . .”

I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant.  But there was somebody before me.  It was Father Dan.  The timid old priest seemed to break in one moment the bonds of a life-long tyranny.

“What’s that you say, Monsignor?” he cried in a shrill voice. “I degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony?  Never in this world!  But if there’s anybody in the island of Ellan who has done that same every day of his life, it’s yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully than in the case we’re talking of at this present speaking.”

“I’m not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan,” began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him up by crying: 

“Perhaps not, Monsignor.  But you’ve got to hear for once, and that’s now.  When this man [pointing to Daniel O’Neill] for his own purposes wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in the matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn’t believe in the sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way for him?”

“You actually mean that I. . . .”

“I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never have been married to a bad man.  You didn’t act in ignorance, either.  When somebody told you—­somebody who is here now—­that the man to whom you were going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a profligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned scoundrel. . . .”