he breakfast-table, at which she left his lordship with two of
his daughters and with a married son-in-law, a clergyman who was
staying in the house. "Very well, my dear," said the bishop, with a
smile,--for he was anxious not to betray any vexation at his wife's
interference before his daughters or the Rev. Mr. Tickler. But he
understood it all. Mr. Chadwick had been sent for with reference to
Mr. Crawley, and he was driven,--absolutely driven, to propose to his
lawyer that this commission of inquiry should be issued.

Punctually at eleven Mr. Chadwick came, wearing a very long face
as he entered the palace door,--for he felt that he would in all
probability be now compelled to quarrel with Mrs. Proudie. Much he
could bear, but there was a limit to his endurance. She had never
absolutely sent for him before, though she had often interfered
with him. "I shall have to tell her a bit of my mind," he said, as
he stepped across the Close, habited in his best suit of black,
with most exact white cravat, and yet looking not quite like a
clergyman,--with some touch of the undertaker in his gait. When he
found that he was shown into the bishop's room, and that the bishop
was there,--and the bishop only,--his mind was relieved. It would
have been better that the bishop should have written himself, or
that the chaplain should have written in his lordship's name; that,
however, was a trifle.

But the bishop did not know what to say to him. If he intended to
direct an inquiry to be made by the rural dean, it would be by no
means becoming that he should consult Mr. Chadwick as to doing so.
It might be well, or if not well at any rate not improper, that he
should make the application to Dr. Tempest through Mr. Chadwick; but
in that case he must give the order at once, and he still wished to
avoid it if it were possible. Since he had been in the diocese no
case so grave as this had been pushed upon him. The intervention
of the rural dean in an ordinary way he had used,--had been made
to use,--more than once, by his wife. A vicar had been absent a
little too long from one parish, and there had been rumours about
brandy-and-water in another. Once he had been very nearly in deep
water because Mrs. Proudie had taken it in dudgeon that a certain
young rector, who had been left a widower, had a pretty governess for
his children; and there had been that case, sadly notorious in the
diocese at the time, of our excellent friend Mr. Robarts o