Canon Nicholls had had a hard fight with a naturally hot temper, and his servant would have given him a very fair character on that point if he had been applied to.  But there came a stifling July morning when nothing could please him.  He had been out to dinner the night before, and it was the man’s opinion that he had “eaten something too good for him.”  He had been to church early, and had come back without the light in his face he usually brought with him, as if the radiance from the sanctuary lamp loved to linger on the blind face.  He was difficult all the rest of the morning, and the kind, patient woman who read aloud to him and wrote his letters became nervous and diffident, thinking it was her own fault.

In the afternoon he usually took a stroll with his servant for guide, and then had a doze, after which he went to Benediction at a neighbouring convent.  But to-day he settled into his arm-chair, and said he meant to stay there, and that he wanted nothing, and (with more emphasis) nobody.

He was, in truth, greatly disturbed in his mind.  He had heard things he did not like to hear of Mark Molyneux.  He had been quite prepared for some jealousy and some criticism of the young man he loved.  Nobody charms everybody, and if anybody charms many bodies, then the rest of the bodies, who are not charmed, become surprised and critical, if not hostile.  It is so among all sets of human beings:  the Canon was no acrid critic of religious persons, only he had always found them to be quite human.

The immediate cause of the acute trouble the Canon was going through to-day had been a visit of the day before from Mrs. Delaport Green.  Adela, who, as he had once told Mark, sometimes looked in for a few minutes, was under the impression that she very often called on the old blind priest, and often mentioned her little attempts to cheer him up with great complacence, especially to her Roman Catholic friends, as if she were a constant ray of light in his darkness.  She had not seen him since her return from Cairo, but her first words were: 

“I was so sorry not to be able to come last week,” spoken with the air of a weekly visitor.

But the Canon thought it so kind of her to come at all that he was no critic of details in her regard.

She had cantered with a light hand over all sorts of subjects,—­Westminster Cathedral, the reunion of Churches, her own Catholic tendencies, her charities, the newest play (which she described well), and her anxiety because her husband ate too much.  Then, at last, she lighted on Mark’s sermons.

Canon Nicholls spoke with reserve of Mark; he was shy of betraying his own affection for him.

“Yes; it is young eloquence, fresh and quite genuine,” he said in response to Adela’s enthusiasm.

“It sounds so very real,” said Adela, with a sigh.  “One couldn’t imagine, you know, that he could have any doubts, or that he could be sorry, or disappointed, or anything of that sort—­and yet——­”