quite to her
satisfaction,--as though everything, indeed, had been arranged by
herself. But everybody about the house could see that the manner of
the woman was altogether altered. She was milder than usual with the
servants and was almost too gentle in her usage of her husband. It
seemed as though something had happened to frighten her and break
her spirit, and it was whispered about through the palace that she
was afraid that the bishop was dying. As for him, he hardly left his
own sitting-room in these days, except when he joined the family at
breakfast and at dinner. And in his study he did little or nothing.
He would smile when his chaplain went to him, and give some trifling
verbal directions; but for days he scarcely ever took a pen in his
hands, and though he took up many books he read hardly a page. How
often he told his wife in those days that he was broken-hearted, no
one but his wife ever knew.

"What has happened that you should speak like that?" she said to him
once. "What has broken your heart?"

"You," he replied. "You; you have done it."

"Oh, Tom," she said, going back into the memory of very far distant
days in her nomenclature, "how can you speak to me so cruelly as
that! That it should come to that between you and me, after all!"

"Why did you not go away and leave me that day when I told you?"

"Did you ever know a woman who liked to be turned out of a room in
her own house?" said Mrs. Proudie. When Mrs. Proudie had condescended
so far as this, it must be admitted that in those days there was a
great deal of trouble in the palace.

Mr. Thumble, on the day before he went to Silverbridge, asked for an
audience with the bishop in order that he might receive instructions.
He had been strictly desired to do this by Mrs. Proudie, and had not
dared to disobey her injunctions,--thinking, however, himself, that
his doing so was inexpedient. "I have got nothing to say to you about
it; not a word," said the bishop crossly. "I thought that perhaps
you might like to see me before I started," pleaded Mr. Thumble very
humbly. "I don't want to see you at all," said the bishop; "you are
going there to exercise your own judgment,--if you have got any;
and you ought not to come to me." After that Mr. Thumble began to
think that Mrs. Proudie was right, and that the bishop was near his
dissolution.

Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful went over to Silverbridge together in a
gig, hired from the Dragon of Wantly--as