In making that promise Mrs. Garstein Fellows reckoned without the
morbid sensibility of the bishop's disorganized nervous system and the
unsuspected theological stirrings beneath the apparent worldliness of
Hoppart and Bent.

The trouble began in the drawing-room after dinner. Out of deference to
the bishop's abstinence the men did not remain to smoke, but came in to
find the Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which these
ladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish them
before the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful wood
fire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinary
heating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt an
appearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for a
little womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found her
party, with the exception of Lord Gatling, who had drifted just a little
too noticeably with Miss Barnsetter into a window, sitting round with
a conscious air, that was perhaps just a trifle too apparent, of being
"good."

And Mr. Bent plunged boldly into general conversation.

"Are you reading anything now, Mrs. Garstein Fellows?" he asked. "I'm an
interested party."

She was standing at the side of the fireplace. She bit her lip and
looked at the cornice and meditated with a girlish expression. "Yes,"
she said. "I am reading again. I didn't think I should but I am."