“I have been given to understand,” said the Bishop, “that circumstances have arisen which have made you not unwilling to return to me for a time.”

“Yes, that is so,” Frances said, “if you care to make use of me.”

She stood before him in the book-lined study where so many of her hours had been spent in bitter bondage of body and spirit. The table with its typewriter was in its accustomed position in the window, and beyond the window she caught a glimpse of the grey stone of the cloister-arch, no longer decked in purple but splashed with the crimson of autumn leaves. The morning sun shone warmly upon it. It was a glorious day.

She had travelled down by a night-train, and not till the official hour of ten o’clock had the Bishop accorded her an interview. His austere countenance displayed no vestige of welcome even now, yet she had a curious conviction that he was not wholly displeased by her prompt reply to his invitation. His greeting of her, though cold, had been without acidity.

“Pray sit down!” he said, indicating a chair. “I have a few questions to ask you before we proceed any further. I beg that you will reply to them as concisely as possible.”

“I will do my best,” Frances said.

She took the seat facing him, the morning-light unsparingly upon her, and she knew that he looked at her with a closer attention than he had ever before bestowed upon her, as she did so.

“I will came to the point,” he said, in his curt, uncompromising way. “You realize of course that my message to you was not the result of chance, that I was actuated by a motive other than the mere desire to suit my own convenience?”

“Yes, I guessed that,” she answered quietly.

He nodded, and she thought that the ascetic lines of his face became a shade less grim as he proceeded. “I will not disguise from you the fact that as a secretary I have not yet found your equal, but that was not my reason for sending you that message. Now, Miss Thorold, kindly pay attention to what I am going to say, for time is short. I am due to conduct the service in the Cathedral in less than half-an-hour. I have a question to ask you primarily to which I must have a simple and unequivocal answer. When I discharged you some three months ago from my employment, I believed that an intrigue of an unworthy nature existed between my nephew and yourself. I ask you now—and you will answer me as before God—has there ever been any justification for that belief either before or since?”

He spoke with great solemnity and emphasis. His eyes—those fanatical deep-set eyes—were fixed upon her with an intensity that seemed to burn her.

“You will answer me,” he said again, “as before God.”

And Frances answered him with the simplicity of one to whom shame was unknown. “There has never been the smallest justification.”

Something of tension went out of the Bishop’s attitude, but he kept his eyes upon her with a scrutiny that never varied. “That being the case,” he said, “on the assumption that you have nothing to hide, I am going to ask you to give me a brief—really a brief account, Miss Thorold, of all that has occurred between the date of your dismissal and the present time.”

He spoke with the precision of one accustomed to instant obedience, but Frances stiffened at the request.

“I am sorry,” she said. “But I am not prepared to do anything of the kind.”

He lifted his thin brows. “You think my demand unreasonable?”

“Not only that. I think it impertinent,” Frances said, and still she spoke with that simplicity which comes from the heart.

“In—deed!” said the Bishop.

There would have followed a difficult pause, but very quietly she filled it. “You see, there are some parts of one’s life so sacred, that no man or woman on earth has any right to trespass there. In fact, I personally could not admit you even if I wished to do so. If I gave you the key, you would not know how to use it.”

“You amaze me!” said the Bishop. He got up and began jerkily to pace the room, much as his nephew had done on the night that she had sat in judgment upon him. “Are you aware,” he said after a moment, “that many men and women also have come to me with their confessions and have eased their souls thereby of many burdens?”

She watched him with her clear eyes as he moved, and in her look was something faintly quizzical. “Yes,” she said, “I can believe that many people find relief in throwing their burdens upon someone else. With me, it is not so. I prefer to bear my own.”

He stopped and confronted her. “You presume to treat this subject with levity!” he said.

“Oh, believe me, no!” She rose quickly and faced him. “I have been through too much for that. But what I have been through only God—who has kept me safe—will ever know. I could not even begin to tell an outsider that.”

The earnestness of her speech carried weight in spite of him. His face softened somewhat. “You are a strange woman, Miss Thorold,” he said. “But I am willing to believe that your motives are genuine though your methods do not always commend themselves to me. Sit down again, and kindly answer the few questions I shall put to you, which, you may as well be assured, are dictated neither by curiosity nor impertinence. I have been placed in a very peculiar position towards you, and I am doing what I conceive to be my duty.”

That moved her also. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she looked at him with a certain respect. “I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, my lord,” she said.

“Enough!” said the Bishop, and waved her back to her chair prior to reseating himself. “First then, when you left me, was it alone?”

“Quite alone,” said Frances.

“And you went—where?”

“I went to a village on the moors called Brookside. It is a few miles from Fordestown. I found a lodging there.”

“Ah! And my nephew knew your whereabouts?”

“Certainly he did. He had offered to find me employment. I had practically promised to be his secretary in the event of his writing a book.”

“You did not consider that in any sense an indiscreet thing to do?” questioned the Bishop.

She felt herself colour slightly, but she answered him without hesitation. “Yes, I did. But beggars can’t be choosers. I tried to keep things on a business footing. I thought he was merely sorry for me. I did not realize—” she stopped abruptly.

“That he was strongly attracted by you?” suggested the Bishop.

“I did not think that I was sufficiently attractive for that to be possible,” she answered with simplicity.

The flicker of a smile crossed his hard features. “You do not know human nature very well,” he observed. “But to continue! You went to Brookside. And then?”

“He came to see me there,” Frances said.

“And made love to you?”

“Yes.”

“Against your will?” asked the Bishop.

She met his look with great directness. “No, it was not—at first—against my will. But I misunderstood him. And he misunderstood me. Afterwards—very soon afterwards—I found out my mistake. That is all I have to say upon that subject. It is over and done with now, and I do not wish to think of it again.”

“I fear it has led to various complications,” said the Bishop, “which make it impossible to dismiss the matter in that fashion. However, we will pass on. May I ask you to give me the bald details of what followed?”

She hesitated. That he was already in possession of most of the circumstances attending her sojourn at Tetherstones was a fact which she did not question, but she had a strong repugnance to discussing them with him.

He read it, and in a moment, with a courtesy that surprised her, he tried to set her at her ease.

“You need not scruple,” he said, “to speak freely to me upon this matter. Nothing that you may tell me will go beyond this room.”

“Thank you,” she said, but still she hesitated. She could not tell him of that terrible night with Montague upon the moors. At last, with an effort, “I had an unpleasant adventure,” she said. “I was lost in a fog. A little blind girl from a farm near by called Tetherstones found me, and took me home with her. I was ill after that, and they nursed me.”

“They?” queried the Bishop.

“The Dermots,” she said.

“Ah!” said the Bishop.

He sat for a space lost in thought, his eyes still fixed upon her.

“Tell me about them!” he said at length. “Of what does the family now consist?”

She told him, and he listened with close attention.

“What is the father like?” he asked then.

“He is an invalid,” she said. “The son works the farm, and the girls all help. The mother spends most of her time looking after the old man.”

“Is he very old?” asked the Bishop.

“Very, I should say,” she answered.

“And the child—she is blind, you say?”

“Not now,” said Frances gently. “She is dead.”

He bent his head. “How did she come to die?”

“It was an accident,” Frances said. “It happened one night——”

She stopped. He was looking at her strangely, almost as if he suspected her of trying to deceive him.

“You are sure it was an accident?” he said.

She gazed back at him in amazement. “How could it have been anything else?”

He made a peculiar gesture as if to check her questioning. “And the old man? Tell me more about him! What form does his malady take?”

His manner was compelling. She found herself answering, though wonder still possessed her. “He suffers with his heart, and at times his brain wanders a little. He gave me the impression of being worn out, but I did not see a great deal of him.”

“You never saw him when he was ill?” said the Bishop.

“Yes, once.” She paused.

“Once?” repeated the Bishop.

“Yes. He was not quite himself at the time. I sat with him for an afternoon. He spoke rather strangely, I remember. He—” Again she paused. Memory was crowding back upon her. The inexplicable horror with which that day she had been inspired returned to her. And suddenly a strange thing happened. It was as if a curtain had been rent aside, showing her in a single blinding moment of revelation the phantom of terror from whose unseen presence she had so often shrunk in fear.

She uttered a sharp gasp, and turned from the hard eyes that watched her. “That is all I can tell you,” she said.

He made no comment of any sort, refraining from pressing her upon the subject with a composure that left her completely at a loss as to his state of mind. Her own mind at the moment was in chaos, so sudden and so overwhelming had been her discovery. She marvelled at her previous blindness, but she asked no question even in her bewilderment. Her loyalty to her friends at Tetherstones held her silent.

She was conscious of an urgent desire to be alone, to trace this thing to its source, to sort and arrange the many odd memories that now chased each other in wild confusion through her brain, to fit together once and for all this puzzle, the key to which had just been so amazingly given her.

But the Bishop still sat before her, an uncompromising inquisitor who would not suffer her to go until he had obtained the last iota of information that he desired.

He spoke, with cold peremptoriness. “Well, Miss Thorold, there remains the matter of your further adventures with my nephew. Your sojourn at Tetherstones at the time of your illness did not—apparently—terminate these. Do you object to telling me under what circumstances you left the Dermots?”

“I left them finally to get work,” she said.

“And in the first place?” said the Bishop.

She met his look again. “In the first place I left them at night with your nephew. We went to an inn at Fordestown. He went up to town the next day, and I took a lodging in the place. I went back to Tetherstones about a week later at the request of old Dr. Square who attended them. The little girl was ill and wanted me. She died that night.”

“And you stayed on?” said the Bishop.

“I stayed on until two days ago, when I also went to town in the hope of selling some of my sketches. Your nephew had offered to help me.”

“And that was your sole reason for going?” he said.

“No, not my sole reason.” She spoke deliberately, and said no more.

“But the only one you are prepared to give me?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered with decision.

He looked at his watch. “And you are not disposed to tell me how you came to run away—at night—with my nephew, a man with whom you wish me to believe that you had no desire to be associated?”

“No,” said Frances quietly.

“My opinion in the matter carries no weight?” he suggested.

She knitted her brows a little. “I would certainly rather you believed in me,” she said. “But—I cannot give you any convincing reason for so doing.”

“You can if you wish,” said the Bishop.

She shook her head. “I am afraid not.”

He rose. “By answering two questions which concern yourself alone. First, why are you not willing to marry my nephew?”

She looked at him, slightly startled. “Because I don’t love him,” she said.

“Thank you,” said the Bishop. “And is there any other man whom you would be willing to marry?”

His eyes held her. She felt the blood surge over her face, but she could not turn away. He waited inexorably for her reply.

For a space she did battle with him, then very suddenly, almost whimsically, she yielded.

“Yes, my lord,” she said, and she spoke with a certain pride.

He held out his hand to her abruptly; there was even a glimmer of approval in his look. “Miss Thorold, you have convinced me,” he said. “I have misjudged you, and I will make amends.”

It was not an apology. There was not a shadow of regret in his words, scarcely even of kindness, yet, oddly, they sent a rush of feeling to her heart that swept away her self-control. She stood speechless, fighting her emotion.

“Enough!” said the Bishop, turning aside. “I must go to prepare for the service. Perhaps you would like to walk in the garden and find refreshment there. I will ask you later to resume your secretarial duties.”

He was gone. She heard the door shut definitely behind him, and the garden with its old-world peace seemed to call her. Storm-tossed and weary, she went out into the warm sunlight, thanking God with her tears.