did not know it.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WRATH OF A FRIEND

Canon Nicholls had had a hard fight with a naturally hot temper, and his
servant would have given him a very fair character on that point if he
had been applied to. But there came a stifling July morning when nothing
could please him. He had been out to dinner the night before, and it was
the man's opinion that he had "eaten something too good for him." He had
been to church early, and had come back without the light in his face he
usually brought with him, as if the radiance from the sanctuary lamp
loved to linger on the blind face. He was difficult all the rest of the
morning, and the kind, patient woman who read aloud to him and wrote his
letters became nervous and diffident, thinking it was her own fault.

In the afternoon he usually took a stroll with his servant for guide,
and then had a doze, after which he went to Benediction at a
neighbouring convent. But to-day he settled into his arm-chair, and said
he meant to stay there, and that he wanted nothing, and (with more
emphasis) nobody.

He was, in truth, greatly disturbed in his mind. He had heard things he
did not like to hear of Mark Molyneux. He had been quite prepared for
some jealousy and some criticism of the young man he loved. Nobody
charms everybody, and if anybody charms many bodies, then the rest of
the bodies, who are not charmed, become surprised and critical, if not
hostile. It is so among all sets of human beings: the Canon was no acrid
critic of religious persons, only he had always found them to be quite
human.

The immediate cause of the acute trouble the Canon was going through
to-day had been a visit of the day before from Mrs. Delaport Green.
Adela, who, as he had once told Mark, sometimes looked in for a few
minutes, was under the impression that she very often called on the old
blind priest, and often mentioned her little attempts to cheer him up
with great complacence, especially to her Roman Catholic friends, as if
she were a constant ray of light in his darkness. She had not seen him
since her return from Cairo, but her first words were:

"I was so sorry not to be able to come last week," spoken with the air
of a weekly visitor.

But the Canon thought it so kind of her to come at all that he was no
critic of details in her regard.

She had cantered with a light hand over all sorts of
subjects,--Westminster Cathedral, the reunion of Churches, her own
Catholic te