olutely, he had clung to the hope that the day
would dawn when his mother would come into his own way of thinking. He
only resigned that hope, while he listened to the prayer of the village
parson beside his mother's open grave. It was an extemporaneous prayer;
but it lacked no detail on that account. And there are few things in
life more tragic than permanent misunderstandings between a child and
parent. That this one must now be permanent not even Scott Brenton's
theological tenets could leave him room for doubt.

Catia's cause for mourning was by far more practical. She realized that
it was Mrs. Brenton who had provided her with a professional husband,
in place of the petty farmers and shopkeepers who, otherwise, had
bounded her horizon. Moreover, she missed Mrs. Brenton sorely, when
there came a need to discuss Scott's faults and failings, to plan how
best to put an end to them before they stood in the way of his career.
Also of her career. For, despite her manifest disdain of the village
parish where, as it seemed to her, Scott was merely marking time, Catia
had her own keen notions as to the part, granted a suitable environment
to serve as stage, a rector's wife could play. Saint Peter's, taken as
a stage, would admirably suit her purposes. A college town, and a
girls' college town at that, could not fail to surround the rector's
lady, not only with a proper train of satellites, but with an audience
worthy of her utmost powers.

Already, at the recent convocation, she had probed the subject
cleverly. That is, in the most incidental fashion, she had led the talk
around to the new Bishop of Western Oklahoma, had casually mentioned
the parish whence he had clambered to the bishop's throne, and then, in
greedily receptive silence, she had listened to the scraps of
conversation evoked by her apparently careless words. At first, her
investigations had been carried on among the other diocesan wives.
Finding them, to all seeming, gullible and loquacious, she had even
ventured on the Bishop. And the good old Bishop, near-sighted and
slightly hard of hearing, had carried away the genial impression that
Brenton's wife was a very pretty woman and would be of inestimable help
to him in managing a parish. Indeed, the Bishop, who was celibate,
thought much about the helpful influence of a proper wife, the evening
after his short talk with Catia. He even wondered whether he had been
quite wise in allowing the two of them--for, e