I have just learned that a certain William Beresford was Bishop of
Ossory once on a time, and I intend to personate this dignitary, clad
in Dr. La Touche's cap and gown. We spend this sunny morning by the
river-bank; Francesca hemming the last of the yellow window curtains,
and I making souvenir programmes for the great occasion. Salemina had
gone for the day with the Colquhouns and Dr. La Touche to lunch with
some people near Kavan and see Donaghmore Round Tower and the moat.

"Is she in love with Dr. Gerald?" asked Francesca suddenly, looking
up from her work. "Was she ever in love with him? She must have been,
mustn't she? I cannot and will not entertain any other conviction."

"I don't know, my dear," I answered thoughtfully, pausing over an
initial letter I was illuminating; "but I can't imagine what we shall do
if we have to tear down our sweet little romance, bit by bit, and leave
the stupid couple sitting in the ruins. They enjoy ruins far too well
already, and it would be just like their obstinacy to go on sitting in
them."

"And they are so incredibly slow about it all," Francesca commented.
"It took me about two minutes, at Lady Baird's dinner, where I first
met Ronald, to decide that I would marry him as soon as possible. When
a month had gone by, and he hadn't asked me, I thought, like Rosalind,
that I'd as lief be wooed of a snail."

"I was not quite so expeditious as you," I confessed, "though I believe
Himself says that his feeling was instantaneous. I never cared for
anything but painting before I met him, so I never chanced to suffer any
of those pangs that lovelorn maidens are said to feel when the beloved
delays his avowals: perhaps that is the reason I suffer so much now,
vicariously."

"The lack of positive information makes one so impatient," Francesca
went on. "I am sure he is as fond of her as ever; but if she refused
him when he was young and handsome, with every prospect of a brilliant
career before him, perhaps he thinks he has even less chance now. He
was the first to forget their romance, and the one to marry; his estates
have been wasted by his father's legal warfares, and he has been an
unhappy and a disappointed man. Now he has to beg her to heal his
wounds, as it were, and to accept the care and responsibility of his
children."

"It is very easy to see that we are not the only ones who suspect his
sentiments," I said, smiling at my thoughts. "Mrs. Colquhoun told me
that she and