presence, I rang
the bell, and the servant who had left her kitchen on hearing the scream
entered immediately.

"Go to your mistress. She is ill," said I.

The maid hurriedly departed. The parson and I looked at one another.

"I am afraid," said I, "that my presence is unhappily an intrusion. I
hope to make your better acquaintance on another occasion."

"Oh, please don't go," said he, "my wife is only a little upset and will
soon recover. I beg that you will excuse her. Besides, I should like to
have a talk with you."

He offered me a chair, my own chair, the comfortable, broad-seated
Empire chair I had given Judith as a birthday present years ago, the
chair in which I had invariably sat. He did it with the manner of the
master of the house, a most courteous gentleman. The situation was
fantastic. Some ingenious devil must have conceived it by way of
pandering to the after-dinner humour of the high gods. As I sat down I
rubbed my eyes. Was this brown-whiskered, bald-headed clerical gentleman
real? The rubbing of my eyes dispelled no hallucination. He was flesh
and blood and still regarded me urbanely. It was horrible. The desertion
of the scoundrelly husband, who I thought was lost somewhere in the
cesspool of Europe, was the basis, the sanction of the relations
between Judith and myself; and here was this reverend, respectable man
apologising for his wife and begging me to be seated in my own chair.
The remark of Judith's that I should find sabbatical calm in the
drawing-room occurred to me, and I had to grip the arms of the chair to
prevent myself from joining Judith in her hysterics.

The appearance of the husband in his legendary colours of rascality
would have been a shock. The sudden scattering of my plans for Judith's
happiness I should have viewed with consternation. But it would have
been normal. For him, however, to appear in the guise of an Evangelical
clergyman, the very last kind of individual to be associated with
Judith, was, I repeat, horribly fantastic.

"I believe, Sir Marcus," said he, deliberately parting the tails of his
exaggerated frock-coat and sitting down near me, "that you are a very
great friend of my wife."

I murmured that I had known Mrs. Mainwaring for some years.

"You are doubtless acquainted with her unhappy history."

"I have heard her speak of it," said I.

"You must then share her surprise in seeing me here to-day. I should
like to assure you, as representing her frie