“It sounds like a tavern brawl,”—­said the Bishop, shaking his head dubiously—­“or a street fight.  So unlike you, Walden!  What was it all about?”

“The fellow was slandering a woman,”—­replied Walden, hotly—­ “Poisoning her name with his foul tongue, and polluting it by his mere utterance—­contemptible brute!  I should like to have horsewhipped him—–­”

“Stop, stop!” interrupted the Bishop, stretching out his thin long white hand, on which one single amethyst set in a plain gold ring, shone with a pale violet fire—­“I am not sure that I quite follow you, John!  What woman is this?”

Despite himself, a rush of colour sprang to Walden’s brows.  But he answered quite quietly.

“Miss Vancourt,—­of Abbot’s Manor.”

“Miss Vancourt!” Bishop Brent looked, as he felt, utterly bewildered.  “Miss Vancourt!  My dear Walden, you surprise me!  Did I not write to you—­do you not know—–­”

“Oh, I know all that is reported of her,”—­said John, quickly—­“And I remember what you wrote.  But it’s a mistake, Brent!  In fact, if you will exonerate me for speaking bluntly, it’s a lie!  There never was a gentler, sweeter woman than Maryllia Vancourt,—­and perhaps there never was one more basely or more systematically calumniated!”

The Bishop took a turn up to the farther end of the room.  Then he came back and confronted Walden with an authoritative yet kindly air.

“Look me straight in the face, John!”

John obeyed.  There was a silence, while Brent scanned slowly and with appreciative affection the fine intellectual features, brave eyes, and firm, yet tender mouth of the man whom he had, since the days of their youth together, held dearest in his esteem among all other men he had ever known, while Walden, in his turn, bore the sad and searching gaze without flinching.  Then the Bishop laid one hand gently on his shoulder.

“So it has come, John!” he said.

Then and then only the brave eyes fell,—­then and then only the firm mouth trembled.  But Walden was not the man to shirk any pain or confusion to himself in matters of conscience.

“I suppose it has!” he answered, simply.

The Bishop sat down, and, seemingly out of long habit, raised his eyes to the blandly smiling Virgin and Child above him.

“I am sorry!”—­he murmured—­“John, my dear old fellow, I am very sorry—–­”

“Why should you be sorry?” broke out Walden, impetuously, “There is nothing to be sorry for, except that I am a fool!  But I knew that long ago, even if you did not!”—­and he forced a smile—­“Don’t be sorry for me, Brent!—­I’m not in the least sorry for myself.  Indeed, if I tell you the whole truth, I believe I rather like my own folly.  It does nobody any harm!  And after all it is not absolutely a world’s wonder that a decaying tree should, even in its decaying process, be aware of the touch of spring.  It should not make the tree unhappy!”