him more comfortable as he went into his wife's drawing-room,
where he felt more like a conspirator and assassin than an English
Rector in broad daylight, without a mystery near him, had any right to
feel. This sensation confused Mr Morgan much, and made him more
peremptory in his manner than ever. As for Mr Proctor, who was only a
spectator, and felt himself on a certain critical eminence, the
suggestion that occurred to his mind was, that he had come in at the end
of a quarrel, and that the conjugal firmament was still in a state of
disturbance: which idea acted upon some private projects in the hidden
mind of the Fellow of All-Souls, and produced a state of feeling little
more satisfactory than that of the Rector of Carlingford.

"I hope Mr Proctor is going to stay with us for a day or two," said Mrs
Morgan. "I was just saying it must look like coming home to come to the
house he used to live in, and which was even furnished to his own
taste," said the Rector's wife, shooting a little arrow at the late
Rector, of which that good man was serenely unconscious. All this time,
while they had been talking, Mrs Morgan had scarcely been able to keep
from asking who could possibly have suggested such a carpet. Mr
Proctor's chair was placed on the top of one of the big bouquets, which
expanded its large foliage round him with more than Eastern
prodigality--but he was so little conscious of any culpability of his
own in the matter, that he had referred his indignant hostess to one of
the leaves as an illustration of the kind of diaper introduced into the
new window which had lately been put up in the chapel of All-Souls. "A
naturalistic treatment, you know," said Mr Proctor, with the utmost
serenity; "and some people objected to it," added the unsuspicious man.

"I should have objected very strongly," said Mrs Morgan, with a little
flush. "If you call that naturalistic treatment, I consider it
perfectly out of place in decoration--of every kind--" Mr Proctor
happened to be looking at her at the moment, and it suddenly occurred
to him that Miss Wodehouse never got red in that uncomfortable way,
which was the only conclusion he drew from the circumstance, having
long ago forgotten that any connection had ever existed between
himself and the carpet on the drawing-room in Carlingford Rectory. He
addressed his next observation to Mr Morgan, who had just come in.

"I saw Mr Wodehouse's death in the 'Times,'" said Mr Proctor, "and