Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be taken out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing grievance against it, and heresy and heterodoxy are bad words ready for it.

— W.W. PEYTON.

THE Bishop was an undersized, spare man, with a rugged, weather-beaten face and sinewy frame. If you had seen him working a crane in a stonemason’s yard, or leading a cut-and-thrust forlorn-hope, or sailing paper-boats with a child, you would have felt he was the right man in the right place. That he was also in his right place as a bishop had never been doubted by any one. Mr. Gresley was the only person who had occasionally had misgivings as to the Bishop’s vocation as a true priest, but he had put them aside as disloyal.

Jowett is believed to have said, “A Bishop without a sense of humour is lost.” Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, by Jowett’s advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its present occupant. The Bishop’s mouth, though it spoke of an indomitable will, had a certain twist of the lip, his deep-set, benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle which made persons like Lord Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an ally, but which ought to have been a danger-signal to some of his clerical brethren — to Mr. Gresley in particular.

The Bishop respected and upheld Mr. Gresley as a clergyman, but as a conversationalist the young Vicar wearied him. If the truth were known (which it never was) he had arranged to visit Hester when he knew Mr. Gresley would be engaging the reluctant attention of a ruri-dicanal meeting.

He gave a sigh of relief as he became aware that Hester and Rachel were the only occupants of the cool, darkened room. Mrs. Gresley, it seemed, was also out.

Hester made tea, and presently the Bishop, who looked much exhausted, roused himself. He had that afternoon attended two deathbeds, one the deathbed of a friend, and the other that of the last vestige of peace, expiring amid the clamour of a distracted Low Church parish and High Church parson, who could only meet each other after the fashion of cymbals. For the moment even his courageous spirit had been disheartened.

“I met a son of Anak the other night at the Newhavens,” he said to Hester, “who claimed you as a cousin — a Mr. Richard Vernon. He broke the ice by informing me that I had confirmed him, and that perhaps I should like to know that he had turned out better than he expected.”

“How like Dick,” said Hester.

“I remembered him at last. His father was the squire of Fallow, where I was rector before I came to Southminster. Dick was not a source of unmixed pleasure to his parents. As a boy of eight he sowed the parental billiard-table with mustard and cress in his father’s absence, and raised a very good crop, and performed other excruciating experiments. I believe he beat all previous records of birch rods at Eton. I remember while he was there he won a bet from another boy who could not pay, and he foreclosed on the loser’s cricketing trousers. His parents were distressed about it when he brought them home, and I tried to make him see that he ought not to have taken them. But Dick held firm. He said it was like tithe, and if he could not get his own in money as I did he must collect it in trousers. I must own he had me there. I noticed that he wore the garments daily as long as any question remained in his parents’ minds as to whether they ought to be returned. After that I felt sure he would succeed in life.”

“I believe he is succeeding in Australia.”

“I advised his father to send him abroad. There really was not room for him in England, and unfortunately for the army, the examiners jibbed at his strictly phonetic spelling. He tells me he has given up being an A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because if people are up in the world they always drink freely, and if they are ‘down on their luck’ they drink all the more to drown care. The reasoning appeared to me sound.”

“He and James used to quarrel frightfully in the holidays,” said Hester. “It was always the same reason, about playing fair. Poor James did not know that games were matters of deadly importance, and that a rule was a sacred thing. I wonder why it is that clergymen so often have the same code of honour as women; quite a different code from that of the average man.”

“I think,” said the Bishop, “it is owing to that difference of code that women clash so hopelessly with men when they attempt to compete or work with them. Women have not to begin with the esprit de corps which the most ordinary men possess. With what difficulty can one squeeze out of a man any fact that is detrimental to his friend, or even to his acquaintance, however obviously necessary it may be that the information should be asked for and given. Yet I have known many good and earnest and affectionate women who lead unselfish lives, who will ‘give away’ their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any provocation at all; will inform you à propos of nothing that she was jilted years ago, or that her husband married her for her money. The causes of humiliation and disaster in a woman’s life seem to have no sacredness for her women friends. Yet if that same friend whom she has run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and night with absolutely selfless devotion.”

“I have often been puzzled by that,” said Rachel. “I seem to be always making mistakes about women, and perhaps that is the reason. They show themselves capable of some deep affection or some great self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black their boots would never stoop to.”

Hester’s eyes fixed on her friend.

“Do you tell them? Do you show them up to themselves?” she asked; “or do you leave them?”

“I do neither,” said Rachel. “I treat them just the same as before.”

“Then aren’t you a hypocrite, too?”

Hester’s small face was set like a flint.

“I think not,” said Rachel tranquilly, “any more than they are. The good is there for certain, and the evil is there for certain. Why should I take most notice of the evil which is just the part which ............