urveyed the tray
before him.

"You ought not to drink that Burgundy," she said. "I can see you
are dog-tired. It was uncorked yesterday, and anyhow it is not very
digestible. This cold meat is bad enough. You ought to have one of those
quarter bottles of champagne you got for my last convalescence. There's
more than a dozen left over."

The bishop felt that this was a pretty return of his own kindly thoughts
"after many days," and soon Dunk, his valet-butler, was pouring out the
precious and refreshing glassful....

"And now, dear?" said the bishop, feeling already much better.

Lady Ella had come round to the marble fireplace. The mantel-piece was
a handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style--with
contemplative ascetics as supporters.

"I am worried about Eleanor," said Lady Ella.

"She is in the dining-room now," she said, "having some dinner. She came
in about a quarter past eight, half way through dinner."

"Where had she been?" asked the bishop.

"Her dress was torn--in two places. Her wrist had been twisted and a
little sprained."

"My dear!"

"Her face--Grubby! And she had been crying."

"But, my dear, what had happened to her? You don't mean--?"

Husband and wife stared at one another aghast. Neither of them said the
horrid word that flamed between them.

"Merciful heaven!" said the bishop, and assumed an attitude of despair.

"I didn't know she knew any of them. But it seems it is the second
Walshingham girl--Phoebe. It's impossible to trace a girl's thoughts and
friends. She persuaded her to go."

"But did she understand?"

"That's the serious thing," said Lady Ella.

She seemed to consider whether he could bear the blow.

"She understands all sorts of things. She argues.... I am quite unable
to argue with her."

"About this vote business?"

"About all sorts of things. Things I didn't imagine she had heard of.
I knew she had been reading books. But I never imagined that she could
have understood...."

The bishop laid down his knife and fork.

"One may read in books, one may even talk of things, without fully
understanding," he said.

Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. "It isn't like
that," she said at last. "She talks like a grown-up person. This--this
escapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that.
She seems to think--that she is not being educated properly here, that
she ought to go to a College. As if we were keeping things