f his design?
No: it would be better to prolong her despair yet another night, and
spring relief upon her suddenly, that she might jump at it and commit
herself without an interval for reflection on certain aspects of the
proceeding.

Nothing, accordingly, did he say; and conjecturing that she would be
hardly likely to take any desperate step that night, he left her to
herself.

His anxiety at this crisis continued to be great. Everything depended on
the result of the Bishop's self-communion. Would he or would he not come
the next day? Perhaps instead of his important presence there would
appear a letter postponing the visit indefinitely. If so, all would be
lost.

Louis's suspense kept him awake, and he was not alone in his
sleeplessness. Through the night he heard his sister walking up and
down, in a state which betokened that for every pang of grief she had
disclosed, twice as many had remained unspoken. He almost feared that
she might seek to end her existence by violence, so unreasonably sudden
were her moods; and he lay and longed for the day.

It was morning. She came down the same as usual, and asked if there had
arrived any telegram or letter; but there was neither. Louis avoided
her, knowing that nothing he could say just then would do her any good.

No communication had reached him from the Bishop, and that looked well.
By one ruse and another, as the day went on, he led her away from
contemplating the remote possibility of hearing from Swithin, and induced
her to look at the worst contingency as her probable fate. It seemed as
if she really made up her mind to this, for by the afternoon she was
apathetic, like a woman who neither hoped nor feared.

And then a fly drove up to the door.

Louis, who had been standing in the hall the greater part of that day,
glanced out through a private window, and went to Viviette. 'The Bishop
has called,' he said. 'Be ready to see him.'

'The Bishop of Melchester?' said Viviette, bewildered.

'Yes. I asked him to come. He comes for an answer to his letters.'

'An answer--to--his--letters?' she murmured.

'An immediate reply of yes or no.'

Her face showed the workings of her mind. How entirely an answer of
assent, at once acted on for better or for worse, would clear the spectre
from her path, there needed no tongue to tell. It would, moreover,
accomplish that end without involving the impoverishment of Swithin--the
inevitable result if she had