been, when the vision fades, I know I shall _admire_ what I have
written. It is that that breaks my heart."

The old, old lament of those who worship art, that sternest mistress in
the world, fell into the silence of the little drawing-room. Rachel
understood it in part only, for she had always vaguely felt that Hester
idealized Nature, as she idealized her fellow-creatures, as she
idealized everything, and she did not comprehend why Hester was in
despair because she could not speak adequately of Life or Nature as she
saw them. Rachel thought, with bewilderment, that that was just what she
could do.

At this moment a carriage drew up at the door, and after a long
interval, during which the wrathful voice of the cook could be
distinctly heard through the kitchen window recalling "Hemma" to a sense
of duty from the back yard, "Hemma" breathlessly ushered in the Bishop
of Southminster.

CHAPTER XIII

Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be taken
out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing
grievance against it, and "heresy" and "heterodoxy" are bad words
ready for it.--W.W. PEYTON.

The Bishop was an undersized, spare man, with a rugged, weather-beaten
face and sinewy frame. If you had seen him working a crane in a
stone-mason's yard, or leading a cut-and-thrust forlorn-hope, or sailing
paper boats with a child, you would have felt he was the right man in
the right place. That he was also in his right place as a bishop had
never been doubted by any one. Mr. Gresley was the only person who had
occasionally had misgivings as to the Bishop's vocation as a true
priest, but he had put them aside as disloyal.

Jowett is believed to have said, "A bishop without a sense of humor is
lost." Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, by Jowett's
advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its present occupant. The
Bishop's mouth, though it spoke of an indomitable will, had a certain
twist of the lip, his deep-set, benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle
which made persons like Lord Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an
ally, but which ought to have been a danger-signal to some of his
clerical brethren--to Mr. Gresley in particular.

The Bishop respected and upheld Mr. Gresley as a clergyman, but as a
conversationalist the young vicar wearied him. If the truth were known
(which it never was), he had arranged to visit Hester when he knew Mr.
Gresley