t of cicerone
to the ladies. Miss Violet, however, for reasons of her own, preferred
seclusion and a quiet chat with Spotts to any amount of architectural
antiquities, so her host was enabled to devote his entire time to Mrs.
Mackintosh.

"Does it strike you," remarked the Bishop, a few moments later, pausing
in his wanderings to inspect critically a fragment of Roman brick--"does
it strike you how absolutely peaceful this spot is?"

"Well," returned Mrs. Mackintosh, "I don't know as it does. I should
have said your palace was about as good a sample of all-round
peacefulness as there is going."

"Ha," said his Lordship, "it hadn't occurred to me."

"That's just like you men. You never know when you're well off. Now with
your palace and Jonah you ought to be content."

The Bishop sighed.

"Dear lady," he said, "I admit my faults. The palace I indeed possess
temporarily, but Jonah--ah, what would Jonah be without you! If I have
left my work once in the past month to ask your advice, I have left it a
hundred times."

"You have," admitted Mrs. Mackintosh with decision.

"Then it is to you that Jonah owes his debt of gratitude, not to me. You
have lightened my labour in more senses of the word than one."

"Well, I've had a very pleasant visit. Blanford's a little paradise."

The Bishop sighed again, and remarked:

"Paradise I have always regarded as being peaceful."

"Yes," acquiesced his companion reflectively, "with all that Jonah went
through, I don't remember as he had an unmarried sister."

There was silence for a moment, and then his Lordship abruptly changed
the subject.

"What a charming, bright, fresh young life is Miss Arminster's! She
dances through the world like--like--er--" And he paused for a simile.

"Like a grasshopper," suggested Mrs. Mackintosh, with marked disapproval
in her tones. The Bishop had a trivial, not to say frivolous, strain in
his nature which seemed to her hardly in accord with his exalted
position.

"No, dear lady," objected his Lordship, "not a grasshopper. Decidedly
not a grasshopper; say--like a ray of sunshine."

"Violet's a good girl," remarked his companion, "a very good girl, but
in most things she is still a child, and the serious side of life
doesn't appeal to her. I dare say she'd go to sleep if you read to her
about Jonah."

"She did," admitted the Bishop; "but then of course," he added, wishing
to palliate the offence, "it was a very hot day. I suppose, how