been sustained by a peculiar loyalty to her
mother, who had passed her fortune on to her daughter unimpaired. This
was a practical declaration of her own will in the matter, and Felicity
accepted it as she might have accepted a sacred trust. She barely
remembered her mother as a shadowy and benign being floating through the
great rooms of the house. During her childhood, a certain angel in one
of the windows of St. George's Church had somehow been confused in her
mind with that figure, and had inspired her with vague awe. These dim
memories and childish fancies had crystallised in later years into an
appreciation of the common interests that would doubtless have been
theirs, had her mother lived.

No hint of this hidden psychological drama had ever reached the bishop's
ken. His daughter's attitude seemed her mother's obstinacy and
worldliness reincarnated, and he was distressed also by more dangerous
elements, by inexplicable sympathies, antipathies, and rebellions, until
the whole fabric of his careful plans seemed destined to fall in ruins.

As the sunlight came stealing in across the table, striking prismatic
colours from the glassware, he shaded his eyes with his hand and sharply
ordered the maid to draw the curtain.

"What is the matter with you this morning, father?" Felicity asked
severely. "Are you ill?"

The corners of her mobile lips were curled slightly upward, with just a
suggestion of scorn. Unhappiness is no great promoter of the courtesies
of life, and if she was conscious of wrong-doing, she was far from being
on the defensive.

"Yes," he answered, "I am ill. I am sick at heart."

"If you will drink coffee, and keep on smoking those strong cigars"--

He eyed her so intently over the rim of his shaking cup that she left the
sentence uncompleted. In spite of her tragic mood, his glare of
resentment aroused within her an inclination to laugh.

"You see how your nerves are affected," she finished.

It was not the first time this subject had come up between them, but
hitherto he had denied with urbane mendacity the ill results of his
favourite indulgences. Now his control was gone.

"They are not affected," he retorted, while the rattling of the cup
against the saucer disproved his declaration. It was with difficulty
that he could extricate his fingers from the handle without breaking the
delicate ware. "Or if they are," he went on, "you misstate the cause,
deliberately, as I believe."