those who have to elect him."

"Not to me," I said hurriedly. "I couldn't work through that list of
Selby-Harrison's. Try my uncle. Try Lord Thormanby. He'll like it."

"There's one thing----" said Lalage.

"Leave it to the synod," said my mother.

"Or to Lord Thormanby," I said.

"Very well," said Lalage. "I will. But perhaps he won't care to go into
it, and if he doesn't I shall have to act myself."

"He will," I said. "He has a perfectly tremendous sense of
responsibility."

"And now," said my mother, "come along, all of you, to the drawing-room
and have tea."

"Is it all right?" said Hilda anxiously to me as we left the room.

"Quite," I said; "there'll be no prosecution. My mother can do anything
she likes with the Archdeacon, just as she does with Lalage. He'll not
enforce a single penalty."

"She's wonderful," said Hilda.

I quite agreed. She is. Even Miss Pettigrew could not do as much. It was
more by good luck than anything else that she succeeded in luring Lalage
away from Ballygore.

CHAPTER XIX

I congratulated my mother that night on her success in dealing with
Lalage.

"Your combination," I said, "of tact, firmness, sympathy, and
reasonableness was most masterly."

My mother smiled gently. I somehow gathered from her way of smiling that
she thought my congratulations premature.

"Surely," I said, "you don't think she'll break out again. She made you
a definite promise."

"She'll keep her promise to the letter," said my mother, still smiling
in the same way.

"If she does," I said, "she can't do anything very bad."

It turned out--it always does--that my mother was right and I was wrong.
The next morning at breakfast a note was handed to me by the footman.
He said it had been brought over from Thormanby Park by a groom on
horseback. It was marked "Urgent" in red ink.

Thormanby acts at times in a violent and impulsive manner. If I were
his uncle, and so qualified by relationship to give him the advice
he frequently gives me, I should recommend him to cultivate repose of
manner and leisurely dignity of action. He is a peer of this realm, and
has, besides, been selected by his fellow peers to represent them in
the House of Lords. He ought not to send grooms scouring the country at
breakfast time, carrying letters which look, on the outside, as if they
announced the discovery of dangerous conspiracies. I said this and more
to my mother before opening the envelope, and she seem