.
'We know only that he was called away on some urgent business--family
affairs, I suppose.'

Chilvers, in the most natural way, glanced from the speaker to Sidwell,
and instantly, without the slightest change of expression, brought his
eyes back again.

'I hope most earnestly,' he went on, in his fluty tone, 'that he will
return. A most interesting man! A man of _large_ intellectual scope,
and really _broad_ sympathies. I looked forward to many a chat with
him. Has he, I wonder, been led to change his views? Possibly he would
find a secular sphere more adapted to his special powers.'

Mrs. Warricombe had nothing to say. Sidwell, finding that Mr Chilvers'
smile now beamed in her direction, replied to him with steady utterance:

'It isn't uncommon, I think, nowadays, for doubts to interfere with the
course of study for ordination?'

'Far from uncommon!' exclaimed the Rector of St. Margaret's, with
almost joyous admission of the fact. 'Very far from uncommon. Such
students have my profound sympathy. I know from experience exactly what
it means to be overcome in a struggle with the modern spirit. Happily
for myself, I was enabled to recover what for a time I lost. But
charity forbid that I should judge those who think they must needs
voyage for ever in sunless gulfs of doubt, or even absolutely deny that
the human intellect can be enlightened from above.'

At a loss even to follow this rhetoric, Mrs. Warricombe, who was
delighted to welcome the Rev. Bruno, and regarded him as a gleaming
pillar of the Church, made haste to introduce a safer topic. After
that, Mr. Chilvers was seen at the house with some frequency. Not that
he paid more attention to the Warricombes than to his other
acquaintances. Relieved by his curate from the uncongenial burden of
mere parish affairs, he seemed to regard himself as an apostle at
large, whose mission directed him to the households of well-to-do
people throughout the city. His brother clergymen held him in slight
esteem. In private talk with Martin Warricombe, Mr. Lilywhite did not
hesitate to call him 'a mountebank', and to add other depreciatory
remarks.

'My wife tells me--and I can trust her judgment in such things--that
his sole object just now is to make a good marriage. Rather
disagreeable stories seem to have followed him from the other side of
England. He makes love to all unmarried women--never going beyond what
is thought permissible, but doing a good deal of mischief, I