ll you answer
me, sir? Who sent you to Mr. Quiverful this morning?"

There was a dead pause in the room. Mr. Slope had risen from his
chair, and was standing with his hand on the back of it, looking at
first very solemn and now very black. Mrs. Proudie was standing as
she had at first placed herself, at the end of the table, and as she
interrogated her foe she struck her hand upon it with almost more
than feminine vigour. The bishop was sitting in his easy chair
twiddling his thumbs, turning his eyes now to his wife, and now to
his chaplain, as each took up the cudgels. How comfortable it would
be if they could fight it out between them without the necessity of
any interference on his part; fight it out so that one should kill
the other utterly, as far as diocesan life was concerned, so that
he, the bishop, might know clearly by whom it behoved him to be led.
There would be the comfort of quiet in either case; but if the bishop
had a wish as to which might prove the victor, that wish was
certainly not antagonistic to Mr. Slope.

"Better the d---- you know than the d---- you don't know," is an old
saying, and perhaps a true one; but the bishop had not yet realized
the truth of it.

"Will you answer me, sir?" she repeated. "Who instructed you to call
on Mr. Quiverful this morning?" There was another pause. "Do you
intend to answer me, sir?"

"I think, Mrs. Proudie, that under all the circumstances it will be
better for me not to answer such a question," said Mr. Slope. Mr.
Slope had many tones in his voice, all duly under his command; among
them was a sanctified low tone and a sanctified loud tone--he now
used the former.

"Did anyone send you, sir?"

"Mrs. Proudie," said Mr. Slope, "I am quite aware how much I owe
to your kindness. I am aware also what is due by courtesy from a
gentleman to a lady. But there are higher considerations than either
of those, and I hope I shall be forgiven if I now allow myself to be
actuated solely by them. My duty in this matter is to his lordship,
and I can admit of no questioning but from him. He has approved of
what I have done, and you must excuse me if I say that, having that
approval and my own, I want none other."

What horrid words were these which greeted the ear of Mrs. Proudie?
The matter was indeed too clear. There was premeditated mutiny in
the camp. Not only had ill-conditioned minds become insubordinate by
the fruition of a little power, but sedition had been overt