r, a large young man, with whom Robin was evidently on the most
friendly, and even intimate, terms, was working with him, and apparently
under his close and constant supervision. A thrush with very bright eyes
looked on from an adjacent elder bush. Upon the wall, near the end of
the Bishop's Palace, a black cat was sunning itself and lazily attending
to its toilet.

"It's the very place for Rosamund," said Beatrice, after a pause, during
which she drank in Welsley. "She seems to know and love every stick and
stone in it."

"And almost every man, woman and child," said the Canon. "She began by
captivating the Precincts,--not such an easy task either, for a bishop
usually has not the taste of a dean, and minor canons think very lightly
of the praises of an archdeacon,--and she has ended by captivating
the whole city. Even the wives of the clergy sing her praises with one
accord. It's the greatest triumph in the history of the church."

"You see she likes them and is thoroughly interested in all their little
affairs."

"Yes, it's genuine sympathy. She makes Welsley her world, and so Welsley
thinks the world of her."

He looked across at Beatrice for a moment meditatively, and then said:

"And when her husband comes back?"

"Dion! Well, then, of course----"

She hesitated, and in the silence the drawing-room door opened and
Rosamund came in, holding an open letter in her hand, knitting her
brows, and looking very grave and intense. She greeted the Canon with
her usual warm cordiality, but still looked grave and preoccupied.

"I've been writing to Mrs. Browning, about the house," she said
earnestly. "It _is_ damp, isn't it?"

"Damp?" said the Canon. "I've never noticed it. But then do you think
the house is unwholesome?"

"Not for _us_. What I feel is, that for a bronchial person it might be."

She paused, looking at her letter.

"I've put just what I feel here, in a letter to Mrs. Browning. I know
the house is considered damp; by the Precincts, I mean. Mrs. Murry told
me so, and Mrs. Tiling-Smith thinks the same. Even the Bishop--why are
you smiling, Canon Wilton?"

But she began to smile too.

"What does the Bishop say about the danger to health of Little
Cloisters?"

Her lips twitched, but she replied with firm sweetness:

"The Bishop says that all, or nearly all, old houses are apt to be damp
in winter."

"A weighty utterance! But I'm afraid Mrs. Browning--by the way, have you
put the Bishop into