ishop's
palace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a number of
strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of local
patriotism and that competitive spirit which has made England what it
is, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolved
to pin his successor to an immediate decision. Of this the new bishop
was unaware. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was
disposed to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, from
which nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easily
reached. This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for the rare rural
quiet of the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the
Walshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible
resolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the see to
put up, own, obtrude, boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiest
thing in episcopal palaces in all industrial England, and the new
bishop had already taken a short lease and gone some way towards the
acquisition of Ganford House, two miles from Pringle, before he realized
the strength and fury of these local ambitions.

At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only among
themselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach the Ganford House
project as a compromise that would glorify no one unfairly, and leave
the erection of an episcopal palace for some future date when he perhaps
would have the good fortune to have passed to "where beyond these
voices there is peace," forgetting altogether among other oversights
the importance of architects and builders in local affairs. His
proposal seemed for a time to concentrate the rich passions of the whole
countryside upon himself and his wife.

Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams were
already unpopular in their county on account of a poverty and shyness
that made them seem "stuck up" to successful captains of industry
only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed
of friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for admission and
endorsements. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of that
enterprising weekly, The White Blackbird, which was illustrated by,
which indeed monopolized the gifts of, that brilliant young caricaturist
"The Snicker."

It had seemed natural for Lady Ella to acquiesce in the proposals of the
leading Princhester photographer. She had always helped where she could
in her husban