ch
is surely unnecessary because you cannot carry it beyond words. Now, if
you will sit up and listen to me, I will tell you what passed between me
and the Doctor." Then she raised herself from the ground and took her seat
at the tea-table, and listened patiently as he began his tale. "They have
been talking about us here in the county."

"Who has found it necessary to talk about one so obscure as I?"

"What does it matter who they might be? The Doctor in his kindly
wrath,--for he is very wroth,--mentions this name and the other. What
does it matter? Obscurity itself becomes mystery, and mystery of course
produces curiosity. It was bound to be so. It is not they who are in
fault, but we. If you are different from others, of course you will be
inquired into."

"Am I so different?"

"Yes;--different in not eating the Doctor's dinners when they are offered
to you; different in not accepting Lady De Lawle's hospitality; different
in contenting yourself simply with your duties and your husband. Of
course we are different. How could we not be different? And as we are
different, so of course there will be questions and wonderings, and that
sifting and searching which always at last finds out the facts. The
Bishop says that he knows nothing of my American life."

"Why should he want to know anything?"

"Because I have been preaching in one of his churches. It is
natural;--natural that the mothers of the boys should want to know
something. The Doctor says that he hates secrets. So do I."

"Oh, my dearest!"

"A secret is always accompanied by more or less of fear, and produces more
or less of cowardice. But it can no more be avoided than a sore on the
flesh or a broken bone. Who would not go about, with all his affairs such
as the world might know, if it were possible? But there come gangrenes in
the heart, or perhaps in the pocket. Wounds come, undeserved wounds, as
those did to you, my darling; but wounds which may not be laid bare to all
eyes. Who has a secret because he chooses it?"

"But the Bishop?"

"Well,--yes, the Bishop. The Bishop has told the Doctor to examine me,
and the Doctor has done it. I give him the credit of saying that the task
has been most distasteful to him. I do him the justice of acknowledging
that he has backed out of the work he had undertaken. He has asked the
question, but has said in the same breath that I need not answer it unless
I like."

"And you? You have