Lady Hester Cardew was the Bishop's second wife, and as such was regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. For one thing, she was very handsome. Bishops' wives, and, indeed, the wives of the clergy generally, do not usually err on the side of excessive physical attractiveness, and a Bishop's lady should surely embody the consolidated virtues and leading characteristics of all the helpmeets of the cloth. She refused to be dowdy; she drove her own dogcart; she wore bright colors whenever the sun shone; and generally displayed a fine, healthy, physical energy and enjoyment of life. Her hair was such a beautiful auburn that the spiteful said it was dyed. She rode a bicycle and was at home on a horse, and it was whispered that her ladyship had openly stated that her husband's public position alone prevented her riding to hounds.

They forgave the widower Bishop, who was but a man, and fleshly--a large, handsome, expansive, dogmatic, loud-voiced person with broad shoulders, and standing six feet in his socks--because he had succumbed to the wiles of Lady Hester Lennox in very different surroundings. They had married when he was merely the vicar of St. Saviour's-in-the-East, and could not be expected to view matrimony in the severe light that beats upon an episcopal throne. He was nobody then.

The _East Ripley Gazette_, at the time of the Bishop's enthronement, had devoted a whole page to the life-story of his lordship, in which the curious learned all that there was to know of his eventful life, and read how he found his second bride in the East End of London, where the beautiful lady was wearing herself to a shadow in the cause of the poor and lowly. That was fifteen years ago, and the diocese was prepared to give the lady full credit for that heroic period of her existence; but they could not forgive her being fashionable now.

So much for the general opinion of the diocese. Lady Hester was popular with the county, conscientious to a fault in her duties, ever moving, ever busy, yet apparently never quite happy. Sympathizers declared that the stress and sorrow of that sad period of battle in the slums still lingered. Others thought that tragedy lurked in her big brown eyes, which laughed and wept in shadow; and her sweet, sympathetic, forgiving soul went out to wrong-doers with such lenient charity that the Bishop himself was often compelled to admonish, and protest that she lacked a proper sense of the expediency of earthly chastisement. She carried the Christian doctrine of forgiveness of sins to absurd lengths, especially in judging the sins of women. She had actually been known to talk to a divorced woman in the streets of Ripley, and had been found out in attempting to hush up a scandal, the suppression of which would have robbed the diocese of at least three months' tea table gossip. Such conduct might be Christian, but was it wise?

The county acclaimed her "a good sort." She was invited everywhere, and, sad to relate, she danced. Yes, she actually danced. Her other sins were also tabulated:--

She was only thirty-eight!

She refused to wear black bonnets.

She rode horseback unattended.

She played tennis.

She lived.

She did not flirt. That saved her, and every lovesick girl made her a confidante. As for the Bishop, he idolized his wife. So did Jack Cardew, the Bishop's son by his first wife.

Jack was twenty-five, and beginning his career at the Bar. His relationship to the prelate helped him a little, but his briefs were short and the vacations long. He was at home now at the Palace, and, the vacation being near its end, he contemplated an early return to London.

* * * * * *

Jack wanted to marry on nothing a year--or next to it--and the Bishop had put his foot down. Bishop Cardew's foot for trampling undesirable schemes was large and firm. The beautiful girl about whom the difference of opinion had arisen between the Bishop and his son was at the present time a guest in the house, and the Bishop blamed his wife for bringing her there.

Lady Hester herself could not have quite explained why Mabel Bannister had stayed so long. Six weeks ago the girl was the guest of Lady Beatrice Carew, a neighbor and daughter of the Marquis of Ripley, and Lady Hester had suddenly extended an invitation to the Palace, because she wanted to see more of the girl.

A slim, tall, upstanding, fair-haired stripling, with a fine poise of the head, a proud, almost disdainful, grey eye, a baby mouth, and a foreign vivacity, for which her education abroad was doubtless largely responsible. This was Mabel Bannister.

Jack Cardew, who was very much in love, was much incensed at his father's opposition, because in an expansive moment the Bishop had patronizingly admitted that Mabel was the very counterpart of Lady Hester fifteen years ago, except for the spirit of folly, the light laugh, and the easy, careless bearing, which were so different from the restrained earnestness of the world-weary Lady Hester at the time of her first meeting with the vicar of St. Saviour's-in-the-East.

But there was a practical side to the whole business. Jack was unable to enlighten his father concerning Mabel Bannister's family connections. She was an unknown, a chance schoolfellow of Lady Beatrice Carew at an Italian convent school, a girl without a mother, daughter of an indolent man about town whose social position seemed to be summed up in the membership of several smart clubs and the _entrée_ to some good country houses; and since childhood she had known no home save school and the hospitality of schoolfellows. The seminaries were of the best, the very best, and her friends were staunch, loyal, and devoted, and vied with one another in having the motherless girl near them. Indeed, for the last year, ever since Mabel's finishing at B----, she had lived almost entirely in the houses of her friends, with an occasional flying visit to her father's London chambers at Stratton Street, Mayfair.

Her stay at the Palace was now coming to an untimely end, and constraint had fallen on everybody since the Bishop withheld his necessary consent to the engagement of his son--who was dependent upon him for income--with a lady of no fortune or family.

Jack was in open mutiny. An appeal to his stepmother brought no comfort, only a counsel of "Patience, patience." Mabel was entirely under Jack's influence. They were madly in love, and she, transformed by her passion from girlhood to womanhood, was ready to defy the whole world (and cry in Lady Hester's lap for sympathy).

A week of suspense had gone by. A sudden, strange calm had settled down. The Bishop made no suggestion to his wife that Mabel should be sent away; and Jack appeared to have accepted the situation with grave resignation. Mabel neither wept nor smiled, but fell into long abstractions and stared into space, pursing her lips finely in a manner suggestive of an obstinate resolution.

Lady Hester, who seemed to understand the working of the girl's mind as if it were her own, instinctively divined the truth. It came upon her one day all in a rush.

"They are going to marry secretly," she cried. "Secretly! God forbid!"

There was a note of horror in that "God forbid!" and she blanched as in the face of an awful peril.

After that she watched Mabel's every movement until the day fixed for the supposed departure for London. Jack, under pretence of a sudden call to town, was leaving the Palace on the same day, but earlier. Mabel was not going till midday.

His farewell to the girl before his father and mother at the breakfast table was almost that of a stranger, so frigidly polite and absurdly indifferent was it.

The parting was unreal. They were going to meet again, and something must be done. Lady Hester was in a fever.