agments, they left the
reception-rooms in a manner not altogether devoid of dignity. Mrs.
Proudie had to retire and re-array herself.

As soon as the constellation had swept by, Ethelbert rose from his
knees and, turning with mock anger to the fat rector, said: "After
all it was your doing, sir--not mine. But perhaps you are waiting
for preferment, and so I bore it."

Whereupon there was a laugh against the fat rector, in which both the
bishop and the chaplain joined, and thus things got themselves again
into order.

"Oh! my lord, I am so sorry for this accident," said the signora,
putting out her hand so as to force the bishop to take it. "My
brother is so thoughtless. Pray sit down, and let me have the
pleasure of making your acquaintance. Though I am so poor a creature
as to want a sofa, I am not so selfish as to require it all."
Madeline could always dispose herself so as to make room for a
gentleman, though, as she declared, the crinoline of her lady friends
was much too bulky to be so accommodated.

"It was solely for the pleasure of meeting you that I have had myself
dragged here," she continued. "Of course, with your occupation, one
cannot even hope that you should have time to come to us, that is,
in the way of calling. And at your English dinner-parties all is so
dull and so stately. Do you know, my lord, that in coming to England
my only consolation has been the thought that I should know you;" and
she looked at him with the look of a she-devil.

The bishop, however, thought that she looked very like an angel and,
accepting the proffered seat, sat down beside her. He uttered some
platitude as to his deep obligation for the trouble she had taken,
and wondered more and more who she was.

"Of course you know my sad story?" she continued.

The bishop didn't know a word of it. He knew, however, or thought he
knew, that she couldn't walk into a room like other people, and so
made the most of that. He put on a look of ineffable distress and
said that he was aware how God had afflicted her.

The signora just touched the corner of her eyes with the most
lovely of pocket-handkerchiefs. Yes, she said--she had been sorely
tried--tried, she thought, beyond the common endurance of humanity;
but while her child was left to her, everything was left. "Oh! my
lord," she exclaimed, "you must see that infant--the last bud of a
wondrous tree: you must let a mother hope that you will lay your holy
hands on her innocent