As my predecessor Bishop Crawshay did not think a new licence would be necessary I have no doubt that you can go ahead with your plan of opening the new St. Agnes’ on Easter Sunday.  At the same time I cannot help feeling that a new licence would be desirable and I am asking Canon Whymper as Rural Dean to pay a visit and make the necessary report.  I have heard much of your work, and I pray that it may be as blessed in my time as it was in the time of my predecessor.  I am grateful to your people for their prayers and I am, my dear Mr. Rowley,

     Yours very truly,

     Harvard Silton.

Canon Whymper, the Rector of Chatsea and Rural Dean, visited the new church on the Monday of Passion week.  On Saturday Father Rowley received the following letter from the Bishop: 

     High Thorpe Castle.

     April 9.

     Dear Mr. Rowley,

I have just received Canon Whymper’s report upon the new church of the Silchester College Mission, and I think before you open the church on Easter Sunday I should like to talk over one or two comparatively unimportant details with you personally.  Moreover, it would give me pleasure to make your acquaintance and hear something of your method of work at St. Agnes’.  Perhaps you will come to High Thorpe on Monday.  There is a train which arrives at High Thorpe at 2.36.  So I shall expect you at the Castle at 2.42.

     Yours very truly,

     Harvard Silton.

Mark paid his second visit to High Thorpe Castle on one of those serene April mornings that sail like swans across the lake of time.  The episcopal standard on the highest turret hung limp; the castle quivered in the sunlight; the lawns wearing their richest green seemed as far from being walked upon as the blue sky above them.  Whether it was that Mark was nervous about the result of the coming interview or whether it was that his first visit to High Thorpe had been the climax of so many new experiences, he was certainly much more sharply aware on this occasion of what the Castle stood for.  Looking back to the morning when he and Father Rowley sat with Bishop Crawshay in his bedroom, he realized how much the personality of the dead bishop had dominated his surroundings and how little all this dignity and splendour, which must have been as imposing then as it was now, had impressed his imagination.  There came over Mark, when he and Father Rowley were walking silently along the drive, such a foreboding of the result of this visit that he almost asked the priest why they bothered to continue their journey, why they did not turn round immediately and take the next train back to Chatsea.  But before he had time to say anything Father Rowley had pulled the chain of the door bell, the butler had opened the door, and they were waiting the Bishop’s pleasure in a room that smelt of the best leather and the best furniture polish.  It was a room that