At dinner the prelate, who sat beside Lady Alice, conversed in the same condescending spirit, and with the same dignified humility, upon all sorts of subjects—upon the new sect, the Huggletonians, whom, with doubtful originality, but considerable emphasis, he likened to "lost sheep."

"Who's lost his sheep, my lord?" inquired Sir Paul Blunket across the table.

"I spoke metaphorically, Sir Paul. The Huggletonians, the sheep who should have been led by the waters of comfort, have been suffered to stray into the wilderness."

"Quite so—I see. Shocking name that—the Huggletonians. I should not like to be a Huggletonian, egad!" said Sir Paul Blunket, and drank some wine. "Lost sheep, to be sure—yes; but that thing of bringing sheep to water—you see—it's a mistake. When a wether takes to drinking water, it's a sign he's got the rot."

The Bishop gently declined his head, and patiently allowed this little observation to blow over.

Sir Paul Blunket, having delivered it, merely added, after a decent pause, as he ate his dinner—

"Dartbroke mutton this—five years old—eh?"

"Yes. I hope you like it," answered his host.

Sir Paul Blunket, having a bit in his mouth, grunted politely—

"Only for your own table, though?" he added, when he'd swallowed it.

"That's all," answered Sir Jekyl.

"Never pay at market, you know," said Sir Paul Blunket. "I consider any sheep kept beyond two years as lost."

"A lost sheep, and sell him as a Huggletonian," rejoined Sir Jekyl.

"It is twenty years," murmured the Bishop in Lady Alice's ear, for he preferred not hearing that kind of joke, "since I sate in this parlour."

"Ha!" sighed Lady Alice.

"Long before that I used, in poor Sir Harry's time, to be here a good deal—a hospitable, kind man, in the main."

"I never liked him," croaked Lady Alice, and wiped her mouth.

They sat so very close to Sir Jekyl that the Bishop merely uttered a mild ejaculation, and bowed toward his plate.

"The arrangements of this room—the portraits—are just what I remember them."

"Yes, and you were here—let me see—just thirty years since, when Sir Harry died—weren't you?"

"So I was, my dear Lady Alice—very true," replied the Bishop in his most subdued tones, and he threw his head back a little, and nearly closed his eyes; and she fancied he meant, in a dignified way, to say, "I should prefer not speaking of those particular recollections while we sit so near our host." The old lady was much of the same mind, and said to him quietly—

"I'll ask you a few questions by-and-by. You remember Donica Gwynn. She's living with me now—the housekeeper, you know."

"Yes, perfectly, a very nice-looking quiet young woman—how is she?"

"A dried-up old woman now, but very well," said Lady Alice.

"Yes, to be sure; she must be elderly now," said he, hastily; and the Bishop mentally made up one of those little sums in addition, the result of which surprises us sometimes in our elderly days so oddly.

When the party transferred themselves to the drawing-room, Lady Alice failed to secure the Bishop, who was seized by the Rev. Dives Marlowe and carried into a recess—Sir Jekyl having given his clerical brother the key of a cabinet in which were deposited more of the memoranda, and a handsome collection of the official and legal correspondence of that episcopal ancestor whose agreeable MSS. had interested the Bishop so much before dinner.

Jekyl, indeed, was a good-natured brother. As a match-making mother will get the proper persons under the same roof, he had managed this little meeting at Marlowe. When the ladies went away to the drawing-room, he had cried—

"Dives, I want you here for a moment," and so he placed him on the chair which Lady Jane Lennox had occupied beside him, and what was more to the purpose, beside the Bishop; and, as Dives was a good scholar, well made up on controversies, with a very pretty notion of ecclesiastical law and a turn for Latin verse, he and the prelate were soon in a state of very happy and intimate confidence. This cabinet, too, was what the game of chess is to the lovers—a great opportunity—a seclusion; and Dives knowing all about the papers, was enabled really to interest the Bishop very keenly.

So Lady Alice, who wanted to talk with him, was doomed to a jealous isolation, until that friend, of whom she was gradually coming to think very highly indeed, Monsieur Varbarriere, drew near, and they fell into conversation, first on the recent railway collision, and then on the fruit and flower show, and next upon the Bishop.

They both agreed what a charming and venerable person he was, and then Lady Alice said—

"Sir Harry Marlowe, I told you—the father, you know, of Jekyl there," and she dropped her voice as she named him, "was in possession at the time when the deed affecting my beloved son's rights was lost."

"Yes, madame."

"And it was the Bishop there who attended him on his death-bed."

"Ho!" exclaimed M. Varbarriere, looking more curiously for a moment at that dapper little gentleman in the silk apron.

"They said he heard a great deal from poor wretched Sir Harry. I have never had an opportunity of asking him in private about it, but I mean to-morrow, please Heaven."

"It may be, madame, in the highest degree important," said Monsieur Varbarriere, emphatically.

"How can it be? My son is dead."

"Your son is"——and M. Varbarriere, who was speaking sternly and with a pallid face, like a man deeply excited, suddenly checked himself, and said—

"Yes, very true, your son is dead. Yes, madame, he is dead."

Old Lady Alice looked at him with a bewildered and frightened gaze.

"In Heaven's name, sir, what do you mean?"

"Mean—mean—why, what have I said?" exclaimed Monsieur Varbarriere, very tartly, and looking still more uncomfortable.

"I did not say you had said anything, but you do mean something."

"No, madame, I forgot something; the tragedy to which you referred is not to be supposed to be always as present to the mind of another as it naturally is to your own. We forget in a moment of surprise many things of which at another time we need not to be reminded, and so it happened with me."

Monsieur Varbarriere stood up and fiddled with his gold double eye-glasses, and seemed for a while disposed to add more on that theme, but, after a pause, said—

"And so it was to the Bishop that Sir Harry Marlowe communicated his dying wish that the green chamber should be shut up?"

"Yes, to him; and I have heard that more passed than is suspected, but of that I know nothing; only I mean to put the question to him directly, when next I can see him alone."

Monsieur Varbarriere again looked with a curious scrutiny at the Bishop, and then he inquired—

"He is a prelate, no doubt, who enjoys a high reputation for integrity?"

"This I know, that he would not for worlds utter an untruth," replied Lady Alice.

"What a charming person is Lady Jane Lennox!" exclaimed Monsieur Varbarriere, suddenly diverging.

"H'm! do you think so? Well, yes, she is very much admired."

"It is not often you see a pair so unequal in years so affectionately attached," said Monsieur Varbarriere.

"I have never seen her husband, and I can't, therefore, say how they get on together; but I'm glad to hear you say so. Jane has a temper, you know, which every one might not get on with; that is," she added, fearing lest she had gone a little too far, "sometimes it is not quite pleasant."

"No doubt she was much admired and much pursued," observed Varbarriere.

"Yes, I said she was admired," answered Lady Alice, drily.

"How charming she looks, reading her book at this moment!" exclaimed Varbarriere.

She was leaning back on an ottoman, with a book in her hand; her rich wavy hair, her jewels and splendid dress, her beautiful braceleted arms, and exquisitely haughty features, and a certain negligence in her pose, recalled some of those voluptuous portraits of the beauties of the Court of Charles II.

Sir Jekyl was seated on the other side of the cushioned circle, leaning a little across, and talking volubly, and, as it seemed, earnestly. It is one of those groups in which, marking the silence of the lady and the serious earnestness of her companion, and the flush of both countenances, one concludes, if there be nothing to forbid, that the talk is at least romantic.

Lady Alice was reserved, however; she merely said—

"Yes, Jane looks very well; she's always well got up."

Monsieur Varbarriere saw her glance with a shrewd little frown of scrutiny at the Baronet and Lady Jane, and he knew what was passing in her mind; she, too, suspected what was in his, for she glanced at him, and their eyes met for a moment and were averted. Each knew what the other was thinking; so Lady Alice said—

"For an old gentleman, Jekyl is the most romantic I know; when he has had his wine, I think he'd flirt with any woman alive. I dare say he's boring poor Jane to death, if we knew but all. She can't read her book. I assure you I've seen him, when nobody better was to be had, making love to old Susan Blunket—Miss Blunket there—after dinner, of course: and by the time he has played his rubber of whist he's quite a sane man, and continues so until he comes in after dinner next evening. We all know Jekyl, and never mind him." Having thus spoken, she asked Monsieur Varbarriere whether he intended a long stay in England, and a variety of similar questions.