him. The duty also had been dear, and
had been performed on the whole with conscientious energy. Was everything
to be thrown up, and his whole life hereafter be made a blank to him,
because the Bishop had been unjust and injudicious? He could see that it
well might be so, if he were to carry this contest on. He knew his own
temper well enough to be sure that, as he fought, he would grow hotter in
the fight, and that when he was once in the midst of it nothing would be
possible to him but absolute triumph or absolute annihilation. If once he
should succeed in getting the Bishop into court as a witness, either the
Bishop must be crushed or he himself. The Bishop must be got to say why
he had sent that low ribaldry to a clergyman in his parish. He must be
asked whether he had himself believed it, or whether he had not believed
it. He must be made to say that there existed no slightest reason for
believing the insinuation contained; and then, having confessed so much,
he must be asked why he had sent that letter to Bowick parsonage. If it
were false as well as ribald, slanderous as well as vulgar, malicious as
well as mean, was the sending of it a mode of communication between a
bishop and a clergyman of which he as a bishop could approve? Questions
such as these must be asked him; and the Doctor, as he walked alone,
arranging these questions within his own bosom, putting them into the
strongest language which he could find, almost assured himself that the
Bishop would be crushed in answering them. The Bishop had made a great
mistake. So the Doctor assured himself. He had been entrapped by bad
advisers, and had fallen into a pit. He had gone wrong, and had lost
himself. When cross-questioned, as the Doctor suggested to himself that
he should be cross-questioned, the Bishop would have to own all this;--and
then he would be crushed.

But did he really want to crush the Bishop? Had this man been so bitter
an enemy to him that, having him on the hip, he wanted to strike him down
altogether? In describing the man's character to his wife, as he had done
in the fury of his indignation, he had acquitted the man of malice. He
was sure now, in his calmer moments, that the man had not intended to do
him harm. If it were left in the Bishop's bosom, his parish, his school,
and his character would all be made safe to him. He was sure of that.
There was none of the spirit of Mrs. Stantiloup in the feeling that had
prev