h
a fellow?"

"Perhaps it would be better if I could," she answered desperately, "but I
can't. Father, you must control yourself. I used to think myself in
love with him, and--and--and I was very foolish"--

"How foolish?" His face had grown white, and he steadied his hands on the
arms of his chair. "Don't torture me, Felicity. Tell me the worst at
once."

"I married him."

At the words his paleness became ashen, and the rigidity of his features
was so ghastly that, forgetting everything else in her alarm, she ran to
his assistance. He waved her away angrily.

"No--I am not going to faint--and I don't want anything to drink."

She resumed her chair obediently, and waited for him to ask more
questions. Apparently he was unwilling or unable to do so, and the
silence seemed interminable, though in reality it lasted but a few
minutes. During that short time the bishop's thoughts ranged with
characteristic rapidity over every aspect of the situation. Emmet as a
son-in-law! First of all, the fact that he was the mayor of Warwick, a
fact which the bishop had hitherto belittled, now presented itself as a
mitigating circumstance. Then the thought that he was a Catholic
followed immediately, to suggest complications and humiliations which the
bishop's large experience enabled him to see with fatal distinctness.
What was the man's paltry office compared with this stupendous fact?
Nothing--a mere accident--a passing honour that would probably be plucked
from him two years hence, leaving him--what? Tom Emmet, ex-professional
baseball player and streetcar conductor, out of a job, no longer mayor,
but always a Catholic, married to the richest woman in Warwick, and that
woman his daughter, the daughter of Bishop Wycliffe!

It was inevitable that he should look at the situation from the point of
view of the bishop rather than from that of the father simply. Had she
been a son who had "gone over to Rome" after taking Anglican orders, the
bishop's professional humiliation would not have been as great as that
which now stared him in the face. It would have been a keen
disappointment indeed, but lightened by the prospect of his son's
preferment in an ancient communion. There would still have been the
possibility of a career for the boy, a career which his father could
watch, or at least anticipate, with emotions of pride; for the bishop was
too purely an ecclesiastic to under-estimate professional success in the
Churc