“I’ve been writing to Mrs. Browning, about the house,” she said earnestly.  “It is damp, isn’t it?”

“Damp?” said the Canon.  “I’ve never noticed it.  But then do you think the house is unwholesome?”

“Not for us.  What I feel is, that for a bronchial person it might be.”

She paused, looking at her letter.

“I’ve put just what I feel here, in a letter to Mrs. Browning.  I know the house is considered damp; by the Precincts, I mean.  Mrs. Murry told me so, and Mrs. Tiling-Smith thinks the same.  Even the Bishop—­why are you smiling, Canon Wilton?”

But she began to smile too.

“What does the Bishop say about the danger to health of Little Cloisters?”

Her lips twitched, but she replied with firm sweetness: 

“The Bishop says that all, or nearly all, old houses are apt to be damp in winter.”

“A weighty utterance!  But I’m afraid Mrs. Browning—­by the way, have you put the Bishop into your letter?”

“I had thought of reading it to you both, but now I shall not.”

She put the letter into an envelope, sealed it up with practical swiftness, rang the bell for Annie and sent it to the postbox round the corner.

“I put the Bishop in,” she added, with a mockery of defiance that was almost girlish, when Annie had gone out.

“That was a mistake,” said the Canon sonorously.

“Why?”

“Bishops never carry weight with the wives, or widows, of deans.”

“But why not?” asked Rosamund, with a touch of real anxiety.

“Because the wives of deans always think their husbands ought to be bishops instead of those who are bishops, and the widows of deans always consider that they ought to be the widows of bishops.  They therefore very naturally feel that bishops are not entitled by merit to the positions they hold, and could be treated with a delicate disdain.”

“I never thought of that.  I wonder if Annie——­”

“Too late!” said the Canon.  “You’ll have to turn out of Little Cloisters, I foresee that.”

Rosamund sat down, leaned towards him with her hands clasped tightly together, and, in her absolutely unself-conscious way, began to tell him and Beattie what she felt about Welsley, or something of what she felt.  A good deal she could only have told to Father Robertson.  When she had finished, Canon Wilton said, in his rather abrupt and blunt way: 

“Well, but if your husband comes home unexpectedly?  You can’t stay here then, can you?”

Beatrice, who was still on the window seat, leaned out, and began to speak to Robin below her in a quiet voice which could scarcely be heard within the room.

“But Dion sees no prospect of coming home yet.”

“I heard to-day from some one in London that the C.I.V. may be back before Christmas.”

“Dion doesn’t say so.”

“It mayn’t be true.”