on opinions which his position proclaimed him to
hold.

"You cannot expect me to assent to either of your propositions, Mr.
Morewood," he said. "If I believed them, you know, I should not be in
the place I am."

"They're true, for all that," retorted Morewood. "And what is it to be
traced to?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said poor Mrs. Lane.

"Why, to Established Churches, of course. As long as fancies and
imaginary beings are left free to each man to construct or destroy as he
will,--or again, I may say, as long as they are fluid,--they subserve
the pleasurableness of life. But when you take in hand and make a Church
out of them, and all that, what can you expect?"

"I think you must be confusing the Church with the Royal Academy,"
observed the Bishop, with some acidity.

"There would be plenty of excuse for me, if I did," replied Morewood.
"There's no truth and no zeal in either of them."

"If you please, we will not discuss the truth. But as to the zeal, what
do you say to the example of it among us now?" And the Bishop, lowering
his voice, indicated Stafford.

Morewood directed a glance at him.

"He's mad!" he said briefly.

"I wish there were a few more with the same mania about."

"You don't believe all he does?"

"Perhaps I can't see all he does," said the Bishop, with a touch of
sadness.

"How do you mean?"

"I have been longer in the cave, and perhaps I have peered too much
through cave-spectacles."

Morewood looked at him for a moment.

"I'm sorry if I've been rude, Bishop," he said more quietly, "but a man
must say what he thinks."

"Not at all times," said the Bishop; and he turned pointedly to Mrs.
Lane and began to discuss indifferent matters.

Morewood looked round with a discontented air. Miss Chambers was
mortally angry with him and had turned to Bob Territon, whom she was
trying to persuade to come to a bazaar at Bellminster on the Monday. Bob
was recalcitrant, and here too the atmosphere became a little disturbed.
The only people apparently content were Kate and Haddington and Lady
Claudia and Stafford. To the rest it was a relief when Mrs. Lane gave
the signal to rise.

Matters improved, however, in the drawing-room. The Bishop and Stafford
were soon deep in conversation; and Claudia, thus deprived of her former
companion, condescended to be very gracious to Mr. Morewood, in the
secret hope that that eccentric genius would make her the talk of the
studios next summer by paint