ases!..." He paused, as though to give her the
opportunity of confirming this conjecture, but she preserved an
apprehensive silence, and he went on, as though taking up the second
point in his sermon--"Or, again, the name may have taken your fancy
without your realizing all that it implies to minds more alive than
yours to offensive innuendoes. It is--ahem--excessively suggestive, and
I hope I am not too late to warn you of the false impression it is
likely to produce on the very readers whose approbation you would most
value. My friend Mrs. Gollinger, for instance--"

Mrs. Fetherel, as the publication of her novel testified, was in theory
a woman of independent views; and if in practise she sometimes failed
to live up to her standard, it was rather from an irresistible tendency
to adapt herself to her environment than from any conscious lack of
moral courage. The Bishop's exordium had excited in her that sense of
opposition which such admonitions are apt to provoke; but as he went on
she felt herself gradually enclosed in an atmosphere in which her
theories vainly gasped for breath. The Bishop had the immense
dialectical advantage of invalidating any conclusions at variance with
his own by always assuming that his premises were among the necessary
laws of thought. This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any
classifications but his own, created an element in which the first
condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint; so
that his niece, as she listened, seemed to feel Mrs. Gollinger's
Mechlin cap spreading its conventual shadow over her rebellious brow
and the "Revue de Paris" at her elbow turning into a copy of the
"Reredos." She had meant to assure her uncle that she was quite aware
of the significance of the title she had chosen, that it had been
deliberately selected as indicating the subject of her novel, and that
the book itself had been written indirect defiance of the class of
readers for whose susceptibilities she was alarmed. The words were
almost on her lips when the irresistible suggestion conveyed by the
Bishop's tone and language deflected them into the apologetic murmur,
"Oh, uncle, you mustn't think--I never meant--" How much farther this
current of reaction might have carried her, the historian is unable to
computer, for at this point the door opened and her husband entered the
room.

"The first review of your book!" he cried, flourishing a yellow
envelope. "My dear Bi