ling
Lady Ella," she said, "I've taken a house, fu'nitua and all! Hea.
In P'inchesta! I've made up my mind to sit unda you--as they say
in Clapham. I've come 'ight down he' fo' good. I've taken a little
house--oh! a sweet little house that will be all over 'oses next month.
I'm living f'om 'oom to 'oom and having the othas done up. It's in that
little quiet st'eet behind you' ga'den wall. And he' I am!"

"Is it the old doctor's house?" asked Lady Ella.

"Was it an old docta?" cried Lady Sunderbund. "How delightful! And now I
shall be a patient!"

She concentrated upon the bishop.

"Oh, I've been thinking all the time of all the things you told me. Ova
and ova. It's all so wondyful and so--so like a G'ate Daw opening. New
light. As if it was all just beginning."

She clasped her hands.

The bishop felt that there were a great number of points to this
situation, and that it was extremely difficult to grasp them all
at once. But one that seemed of supreme importance to his whirling
intelligence was that Lady Ella should not know that he had gone to
relieve his soul by talking to Lady Sunderbund in London. It had never
occurred to him at the time that there was any shadow of disloyalty to
Lady Ella in his going to Lady Sunderbund, but now he realized that this
was a thing that would annoy Lady Ella extremely. The conversation had
in the first place to be kept away from that. And in the second place it
had to be kept away from the abrupt exploitation of the new theological
developments.

He felt that something of the general tension would be relieved if they
could all three be got to sit down.

"I've been talking for just upon two hours," he said to Lady Ella. "It's
good to see the water boiling for tea."

He put a chair for Lady Sunderbund to the right of Lady Ella, got her
into it by infusing an ecclesiastical insistence into his manner, and
then went and sat upon the music-stool on his wife's left, so as to
establish a screen of tea-things and cakes and so forth against her more
intimate enthusiasm. Meanwhile he began to see his way clearer and to
develop his line.

"Well, Lady Sunderbund," he said, "I can assure you that I think you
will be no small addition to the church life of Princhester. But I warn
you this is a hard-working and exacting diocese. We shall take your
money, all we can get of it, we shall take your time, we shall work you
hard."

"Wo'k me hard!" cried Lady Sunderbund with passion.

"We