agitated hand. "Wait, wait, my dear Natalie," she
objected. "Perhaps after all, we had better go no further. I--I think we
had better give the plan up," she said in apparently the deepest
distress.

The girl turned a patient shoulder, and looked into the street again,
abstractedly playing with the cord of the blind.

"It is really too much to ask of you," continued Mrs. Mabyn distressfully;
"and I am so afraid for Natalie! Natalie is so very dear to me. The
situation is _so_ unusual!" she wailed.

Poor Garth was sadly perplexed and exasperated by all this. The discovery
he anticipated was now apparently in retreat.

"We are glad, anyway, to have had the pleasure of making your
acquaintance," said Mrs. Mabyn with an air of finality.

Suddenly it was borne in upon Garth, partly from the girl's patient
attitude, partly from the other's emphasis upon her distress, that it
was simply, in newspaper parlance, all a bluff on the part of the older
woman. Her fanatic eyes seemed to tell him that she was still bent on
her object, whatever it might be. Experience had taught him that the
quickest way to find out if he were right was to seem to fall in
with her desire. So he promptly rose as if to leave. It worked.

Mrs. Mabyn's eyes snapped. She did not relish being taken up so quickly.
"One moment, Mr. Pevensey," she said plaintively--and hastily. "Overlook
the distraction of an old woman; I am torn two ways!"

Garth understood by this that the matter was reopened; and sat down
again. There was a pause, while the old lady struggled, with the air of
a martyr, to regain her composure. The girl continued to look stolidly
out of the window; and Garth simply waited for what was coming.

"You may continue, Natalie," said Mrs. Mabyn at length, faintly.

The girl resumed her explanation at the exact point where she left off.
"We expected--that is, we hoped you were an older man--" Garth looked
so disappointed she immediately added: "For that would make the request
seem less strange." She hesitated.

"What is it?" asked Garth.

But she parried awhile. "What sort of a man is the Bishop?" she asked.

Garth described his modesty and his manliness.

"A very proper person to be Bishop in a wild country," remarked Mrs.
Mabyn, patronizingly.

"And his wife?" asked Natalie.

Garth pictured a homely, unassuming body, with a great heart.

"Of course!" said Mrs. Mabyn. A whole chapter might be devoted to the
analysis of the tone in