out of it. But how extraordinary it is the difficulty men have in getting
away from things!"

Perhaps Lady Sophia was right. Perhaps the rector could not get away from
the atmosphere which seemed to be destroying him.

"I dare say he is afraid to trust everything to his curates," observed
Malling, prosaically.

"He needn't be--now," she replied.

In that "now," as she said it, there lay surely a whole history. Malling
understood that Lady Sophia, suddenly perhaps, had given her husband up.
Since Malling had first encountered her she had cried, _"Le roi est
mort!"_ in her heart. The way she had just uttered the word "now" made
Malling wonder whether she was not about to utter the supplementary cry,
_"Vive le roi!"_

As he looked at her, with this wonder in his mind, Henry Chichester came
into the room.

There was an expression of profound sadness on his face, which seemed to
dignify it, to make it more powerful, more manly, than it had been. The
choir-boy look was gone. Malling of course knew how very much expression
can change a human being; nevertheless, he was startled by the alteration
in the curate's outward man. It seemed, to use the rector's phrase, that
he had "shed his character." And now, perhaps, the new character,
mysteriously using matter as the vehicle of its manifestation, was
beginning to appear to the eyes of men. He showed no surprise at the
sight of Malling, but rather a faint, though definite, pleasure. The