art and Bent.

The trouble began in the drawing-room after dinner. Out of deference to
the bishop's abstinence the men did not remain to smoke, but came in to
find the Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which these
ladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish them
before the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful wood
fire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinary
heating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt an
appearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for a
little womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found her
party, with the exception of Lord Gatling, who had drifted just a little
too noticeably with Miss Barnsetter into a window, sitting round with
a conscious air, that was perhaps just a trifle too apparent, of being
"good."

And Mr. Bent plunged boldly into general conversation.

"Are you reading anything now, Mrs. Garstein Fellows?" he asked. "I'm an
interested party."

She was standing at the side of the fireplace. She bit her lip and
looked at the cornice and meditated with a girlish expression. "Yes,"
she said. "I am reading again. I didn't think I should but I am."

"For a time," said Hoppart, "I read nothing but the papers. I bought
from a dozen to twenty a day."

"That is wearing off," said the bishop.

"The first thing I began to read again," said Mrs. Garstein Fellows,
"--I'm not saying it for your sake, Bishop--was the Bible."

"I went to the Bible," said Bent as if he was surprised.

"I've heard that before," said Ridgeway Kelso, in that slightly
explosive manner of his. "All sorts of people who don't usually read the
Bible--"

"But Mr. Kelso!" protested their hostess with raised eyebrows.

"I was thinking of Bent. But anyhow there's been a great wave of
seriousness, a sudden turning to religion and religious things. I don't
know if it comes your way, Bishop...."

"I've had no rows of penitents yet."

"We may be coming," said Hoppart.

He turned sideways to face the bishop. "I think we should be coming
if--if it wasn't for old entangled difficulties. I don't know if you
will mind my saying it to you, but...."

The bishop returned his frank glance. "I'd like to know above all
things," he said. "If Mrs. Garstein Fellow will permit us. It's my
business to know."

"We all want to know," said Lady Sunderbund, speaking from the low chair
on the other side of the firep