h more sharply aware on this
occasion of what the Castle stood for. Looking back to the morning when
he and Father Rowley sat with Bishop Crawshay in his bedroom, he
realized how much the personality of the dead bishop had dominated his
surroundings and how little all this dignity and splendour, which must
have been as imposing then as it was now, had impressed his imagination.
There came over Mark, when he and Father Rowley were walking silently
along the drive, such a foreboding of the result of this visit that he
almost asked the priest why they bothered to continue their journey, why
they did not turn round immediately and take the next train back to
Chatsea. But before he had time to say anything Father Rowley had pulled
the chain of the door bell, the butler had opened the door, and they
were waiting the Bishop's pleasure in a room that smelt of the best
leather and the best furniture polish. It was a room that so long as Dr.
Cheesman held the see of Silchester would be given over to the
preliminary nervousness of the diocesan clergy, who would one after
another look at that steel engraving of Jesus Christ preaching by the
Sea of Galilee, and who when they had finished looking at that would
look at those two oil paintings of still life, those rich and sombre
accumulations of fish, fruit and game, that glowed upon the walls with a
kind of sinister luxury. Waiting rooms are all much alike, the doctor's,
the dentist's, the bishop's, the railway-station's; they may differ
slightly in externals, but they all possess the same atmosphere of
transitory discomfort. They have all occupied human beings with the
perusal of books they would never otherwise have dreamed of opening,
with the observation of pictures they would never otherwise have thought
of regarding twice.

"Would you step this way," the butler requested. "His lordship is
waiting for you in the library."

The two culprits, for by this time Mark was oblivious of every other
emotion except one of profound guilt, guilt of what he could not say,
but most unmistakably guilt, walked along toward the Bishop's
library--Father Rowley like a fat and naughty child who knows he is
going to be reproved for eating too many tarts.

There was a studied poise in the attitude of the Bishop when they
entered. One shapely leg trailed negligently behind his chair ready at
any moment to serve as the pivot upon which its owner could swing round
again into the every-day world; the