he Bishop opened his despatch-box and took out
a letter.

It was directed to Lady Newhaven.

"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his death,
whenever that might happen to be," he said to himself. "There was some
trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it to me. Anyhow, I must
go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike her so much. I shall advise
her not to read it till I am gone."

CHAPTER XLIX

The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat cried, "Allah!"
--Syrian Proverb.

That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop
could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the
greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, nevertheless, so
overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical sensations, that she
very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he called. Her faith even in
lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who would show her any good? Poor
Lady Newhaven was crushed into a state of prostration so frightful that
we must not blame her if she felt that even an Archbishop would have
been powerless to help her.

She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing up to
London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she had looked
out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last moment. There
had been a look on Hugh's face during that last momentary meeting which
she could not nerve herself to see again. She had been to London already
once to see him, without success.

She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing Hester, and
twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see her, and make a
desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she knew that she should
fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a
defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of
it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own
property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were,
in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise
a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as
she was capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the
idea that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail
fastened into it.

And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they know
pain until they know jealousy.

But when the Bishop s