All the love which could not be covered by his own mild courtship of the obviously grateful Mrs. Gresley, Mr. Gresley put down as exaggerated.  There was a good deal of such exaggeration in Hester’s book, which could only be attributed to the French novels of which he had frequently expressed his disapproval when he saw Hester reading them.  It was given to Mr. Gresley to perceive that the French classics are only read for the sake of the hideous improprieties contained in them.  He had explained this to Hester, and was indignant that she had continued to read them just as frequently as before, even translating parts of some of them into English, and back again into the original.  She would have lowered the Bishop forever in his Vicar’s eyes, if she had mentioned by whose advice and selection she read, so she refrained.

Suddenly, as he read, Mr. Gresley’s face softened.  He came to the illness and death of a child.  It had been written long before Regie fell ill, but Mr. Gresley supposed it could only have been the result of what had happened a few weeks ago since the book was sent up to the publisher.

Two large tears fell on to the sheet.  Hester’s had been there before them.  It was all true, every word.  Here was no exaggeration, no fantastic overcoloring for the sake of effect.

“Ah, Hester!” he said, wiping his eyes.  “If only the rest were like that.  If you would only write like that.”

A few pages more, and his eyes were like flint.  The admirable clergyman who had attracted him from the first reappeared.  His opinions were uncommonly well put.  But gradually it dawned upon Mr. Gresley that the clergyman was toiling in very uncomfortable situations, in which he did not appear to advantage.  Mr. Gresley did not see that the uncomfortable situations were the inevitable result of holding certain opinions, but he did see that “Hester was running down the clergy.”  Any fault found with the clergy was in Mr. Gresley’s eyes an attack upon the Church, nay, upon religion itself.  That a protest against a certain class of the clergy might be the result of a close observation of the causes that bring ecclesiastical Christianity into disrepute could find no admission to Mr. Gresley’s mind.  Yet a protest against the ignorance or inefficiency of some of our soldiers he would have seen without difficulty might be the outcome, not of hatred of the army, but of a realization of its vast national importance, and of a desire of its well-being.

Mr. Gresley was outraged.  “She holds nothing sacred,” he said, striking the book.  “I told her after the Idyll, that I desired she would not mention the subject of religion in her next book, and this is worse than ever.  She has entirely disregarded my expressed wishes.  Everything she says has a sting in it.  Look at this.  It begins well, but it ends with a sneer.”