alace
garden would have been infinitely preferable, and he knew that had he
accepted sugarless tea without a murmur, his chaplain would have
sweltered in his place. As it was, he submitted meekly, and his sister
gazed at him with a satisfied expression of triumph across her bright
green tea-cloth. If Miss Matilda had a weakness, it was for
ecclesiastical tea-cloths. White was reserved for Sundays and
feast-days; on ordinary occasions, at this time of the year, her ritual
prescribed green.

They were seated in the garden of the palace, a peaceful Arcadia which
it was difficult to realise was only separated from a dusty and concrete
world by a battlemented wall which formed the horizon. The sky overhead
was so blue and cloudless that it might have formed the background for
an Italian landscape, and framed against it was the massive tower of the
cathedral, its silver-greys darkening almost to black, as a buttress
here and there brought it in shadow. Among its pinnacles a few wise old
rooks flapped lazily in the still air, as much a part of their
surroundings as the stately swans that floated on the stream which
lapped the foot of the tower, while on all sides there stretched away a
great sweep of that perfect verdure which only England knows.

"It's nearly two months since I last wrote to Cecil," said the Bishop,
judging it wise to change the trend of the conversation, "and I've not
heard a word."

"I'm sure I should be surprised if you had," snapped Miss Matilda. "And
what your sainted Sarah would have felt, had she lived to see her son's
disgraceful career, makes me shudder."

The Bishop started to sigh again. Then, thinking better of it, stopped.
He had returned to Blanford from his rest-cure a week before, and
apparently the air of Scotland had not proved as beneficial as he had
expected.

"I believe that Cecil will come back to us," he said, ignoring his
sister's last remark. "I told him that his friends would be welcome here
in future, and I particularly mentioned that you'd put a copy of his
book in your last missionary box."

"I hope you didn't neglect to say that I tore out all the pictures. A
more scandalous collection--"

But she never finished her denunciation of the novel, for just at that
moment the Bishop sprang to his feet with a glad cry of "Cecil!"

The young man came running across the lawn to meet his father, seizing
him warmly by the hand, and having administered a dutiful peck to his
aunt,