ls. The school had not been
so low as this for the last fifteen years. There had never been less than
eight-and-twenty before, since Mrs. Stantiloup had first begun her
campaign. It was heartbreaking to him. He felt as though he were almost
ashamed to go into his own school. In directing his housekeeper to send
the diminished orders to the tradesmen he was thoroughly ashamed of
himself; in giving his directions to the usher as to the re-divided
classes he was thoroughly ashamed of himself. He wished that there was no
school, and would have been contented now to give it all up, and to
confine Mary's fortune to L10,000 instead of L20,000, had it not been that
he could not bear to confess that he was beaten. The boys themselves
seemed almost to carry their tails between their legs, as though even they
were ashamed of their own school. If, as was too probable, another
half-dozen should go at Christmas, then the thing must be abandoned. And
how could he go on as rector of the parish with the abominable empty
building staring him in the face every moment of his life.

"I hope you are not really going to law," said his wife to him.

"I must, my dear. I have no other way of defending my honour."

"Go to law with the Bishop?"

"No, not with the Bishop."

"But the Bishop would be brought into it?"

"Yes; he will certainly be brought into it."

"And as an enemy. What I mean is, that he will be brought in very much
against his own will."

"Not a doubt about it," said the Doctor. "But he will have brought it
altogether upon himself. How he can have condescended to send that
scurrilous newspaper is more than I can understand. That one gentleman
should have so treated another is to me incomprehensible. But that a
bishop should have done so to a clergyman of his own diocese shakes all my
old convictions. There is a vulgarity about it, a meanness of thinking,
an aptitude to suspect all manner of evil, which I cannot fathom. What!
did he really think that I was making love to the woman; did he doubt that
I was treating her and her husband with kindness, as one human being is
bound to treat another in affliction; did he believe, in his heart, that I
sent the man away in order that I might have an opportunity for a wicked
purpose of my own? It is impossible. When I think of myself and of him,
I cannot believe it. That woman who has succeeded at last in stirring up
all this evil against me,--even she could not be