sier when mistakes are forgiven?"

"I did forgive it, as far as foregoing the action."

"That, I think, was a matter of course. If you had succeeded in putting
the poor Bishop into a witness-box you would have had every sensible
clergyman in England against you. You felt that yourself."

"Not quite that," said the Doctor.

"Something very near it; and therefore you withdrew. But you cannot get
the sense of the injury out of your mind, and, therefore, you have
persecuted the Bishop with that letter."

"Persecuted?"

"He will think so. And so should I, had it been addressed to me. As I
said before, all your arguments are true,--only I think you have made so
much more of the matter than was necessary! He ought not to have sent you
that newspaper, nor ought he to have talked about the metropolitan press.
But he did you no harm; nor had he wished to do you harm;--and perhaps it
might have been as well to pass it over."

"Could you have done so?"

"I cannot imagine myself in such a position. I could not, at any rate,
have written such a letter as that, even if I would; and should have been
afraid to write it if I could. I value peace and quiet too greatly to
quarrel with my bishop,--unless, indeed, he should attempt to impose upon
my conscience. There was nothing of that kind here. I think I should
have seen that he had made a mistake, and have passed it over."

The Doctor, as he rode home, was, on the whole, better pleased with his
visit than he had expected to be. He had been told that his letter was
argumentative and true, and that in itself had been much.

At the end of the week he received a reply from the Bishop, and found that
it was not, at any rate, written by the chaplain.

"MY DEAR DR. WORTLE," said the reply; "your letter has pained me
exceedingly, because I find that I have caused you a degree of annoyance
which I am certainly very sorry I have inflicted. When I wrote to you in
my letter,--which I certainly did not intend as an admonition,--about the
metropolitan press, I only meant to tell you, for your own information,
that the newspapers were making reference to your affair with Mr.
Peacocke. I doubt whether I knew anything of the nature of 'Everybody's
Business.' I am not sure even whether I had ever actually read the words
to which you object so strongly. At any rate, they had had no weight with
me. If I had read them,--which I probably did very cursorily,--they did
not rest on m