These hopes Fetherel’s attitude had already defeated.  He read the book with enthusiasm, he pressed it on his friends, he sent a copy to his mother; and his very soul now hung on the verdict of the reviewers.  It was perhaps this proof of his general ineptitude that made his wife doubly alive to his special defects; so that his inopportune entrance was aggravated by the very sound of his voice and the hopeless aberration of his smile.  Nothing, to the observant, is more indicative of a man’s character and circumstances than his way of entering a room.  The Bishop of Ossining, for instance, brought with him not only an atmosphere of episcopal authority, but an implied opinion on the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and on the attitude of the church toward divorce; while the appearance of Mrs. Fetherel’s husband produced an immediate impression of domestic felicity.  His mere aspect implied that there was a well-filled nursery upstairs; that this wife, if she did not sew on his buttons, at least superintended the performance of that task; that they both went to church regularly, and that they dined with his mother every Sunday evening punctually at seven o’clock.

All this and more was expressed in the affectionate gesture with which he now raised the yellow envelope above Mrs. Fetherel’s clutch; and knowing the uselessness of begging him not to be silly, she said, with a dry despair, “You’re boring the Bishop horribly.”

Fetherel turned a radiant eye on that dignitary.  “She bores us all horribly, doesn’t she, sir?” he exulted.

“Have you read it?” said his wife, uncontrollably.

“Read it?  Of course not—­it’s just this minute come.  I say, Bishop, you’re not going—?”

“Not till I’ve heard this,” said the Bishop, settling himself in his chair with an indulgent smile.

His niece glanced at him despairingly.  “Don’t let John’s nonsense detain you,” she entreated.

“Detain him?  That’s good,” guffawed Fetherel.  “It isn’t as long as one of his sermons—­won’t take me five minutes to read.  Here, listen to this, ladies and gentlemen:  ’In this age of festering pessimism and decadent depravity, it is no surprise to the nauseated reviewer to open one more volume saturated with the fetid emanations of the sewer—­’”

Fetherel, who was not in the habit of reading aloud, paused with a gasp, and the Bishop glanced sharply at his niece, who kept her gaze fixed on the tea-cup she had not yet succeeded in transferring to his hand.—­“‘Of the sewer,’” her husband resumed; “’but his wonder is proportionately great when he lights on a novel as sweetly inoffensive as Paula Fetherel’s “Fast and Loose.”  Mrs. Fetherel is, we believe, a new hand at fiction, and her work reveals frequent traces of inexperience; but these are more than atoned for by her pure, fresh view of life and her altogether unfashionable regard for the reader’s moral susceptibilities.  Let no one be induced by its distinctly misleading title to forego the enjoyment of this pleasant picture of domestic life, which, in spite of a total lack of force in character-drawing and of consecutiveness in incident, may be described as a distinctly pretty story.’”