here;--for some
reason or other."

"How the reason should be promotion, puzzles me," said her companion;
"but that may be owing to prejudice on my part. I do not know how to
conceive of promotion out of the regular line. In England and in the
Church. To be sent to India to take a bishopric seems to me a descent
in the scale. Have you this feeling?"

"About bishoprics?" said Eleanor smiling. "They are not in my line, you
know."

"Don't be wicked! Have you this feeling about England?"

"If a bishopric in India were offered me?--"

"Well, yes! Would you accept it?"

"I really never had occasion to consider the subject before. It is such
a very new thought, you see. But I will tell you, I should think the
humblest curacy in England to be chosen rather,--unless for the sake of
a wider sphere of doing good."

"Do you know," said Mr. Carlisle, looking very contented, and coming up
closer, "your bridle hand has improved? It is very nearly faultless.
What have you been riding this winter?"

"A wiry little pony."

"Honour, Eleanor!" said Mr. Carlisle laughing and bringing his hand
again near enough to throw over a lock of Maggie's mane which had
fallen on the wrong side. "I am really curious."

"Well I tell you the truth. But Mr. Carlisle, I wonder you people in
parliament do not stir yourselves up to right some wrongs. People ought
to live, if they are curates; and there was one where I was last
winter--an excellent one--living, or starving, I don't know which you
would call it, on thirty pounds a year."

Mr. Carlisle entered into the subject; and questions moral,
legislative, and ecclesiastical, were discussed by him and Eleanor with
great earnestness and diligence; by him at least with singular delight.
Eleanor kept up the conversation with unflagging interest; it was
broken by a proposal on Mr. Carlisle's part for a gallop, to which she
willingly agreed; held her part in the ensuing scamper with perfect
grace and steadiness, and as soon as it was over, plunged Mr. Carlisle
deep again into reform.

"Nobody has had such honour, as I to-day," he assured her as he took
her down from her horse. "I shall see you to-night, of course?"

"Of course. I suppose," said Eleanor.

It cannot be said that Eleanor made any effort to change the "of
course," though the rest of the day as usual was swallowed up in a
round of engagements. There was no breathing time, and the evening
occasion was a public one. Mrs. Powle was in