nd therefore was he under the
necessity of asking Dr. Tempest to assist him. Would Dr. Tempest come
over on the Monday, and stay till the Wednesday?

The letter was a very good letter, and Dr. Tempest was obliged to do
as he was asked. He so far modified the bishop's proposition that he
reduced the sojourn at the palace by one night. He wrote to say that
he would have the pleasure of dining with the bishop and Mrs. Proudie
on the Monday, but would return home on the Tuesday, as soon as the
business in hand would permit him. "I shall get on very well with
him," he said to his wife before he started; "but I am afraid of
the woman. If she interferes there will be a row." "Then, my dear,"
said his wife, "there will be a row, for I am told that she always
interferes." On reaching the palace half-an-hour before dinner-time,
Dr. Tempest found that other guests were expected, and on descending
to the great yellow drawing-room, which was used only on state
occasions, he encountered Mrs. Proudie and two of her daughters
arrayed in a full panoply of female armour. She received him with
her sweetest smiles, and if there had been any former enmity between
Silverbridge and the palace, it was now all forgotten. She regretted
greatly that Mrs. Tempest had not accompanied the doctor;--for Mrs
Tempest also had been invited. But Mrs. Tempest was not quite as well
as she might have been, the doctor had said, and very rarely slept
away from home. And then the bishop came in and greeted his guest
with his pleasantest good humour. It was quite a sorrow to him that
Silverbridge was so distant, and that he saw so little of Dr. Tempest;
but he hoped that that might be somewhat mended now, and that leisure
might be found for social delights;--to all which Dr. Tempest said but
little, bowing to the bishop at each separate expression of his
lordship's kindness.

There were guests there that evening who did not often sit at the
bishop's table. The archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly had been summoned
from Plumstead, and had obeyed the summons. Great as was the enmity
between the bishop and the archdeacon, it had never quite taken the
form of open palpable hostility. Each, therefore, asked the other to
dinner perhaps once every year; and each went to the other, perhaps,
once in two years. And Dr. Thorne from Chaldicotes was there, but
without his wife, who in these days was up in London. Mrs. Proudie
always expressed a warm friendship for Mrs. Thorne, and