this mere instinctive selfishness on her part? If he vaguely condemned
her attitude in this matter, he appreciated her father's conduct the
more by contrast. Somehow he guessed that the bishop did not
altogether like him, but he felt that no matter what the future might
bring forth in their relationship, he could never forget that charming
episode. The bishop was a true aristocrat, he reflected, more inclined
to be haughty to his equals than to his inferiors. Doubtless Emmet,
had he been content with that station of life in which it had pleased
God to place him, would have found no more affable acquaintance than
Bishop Wycliffe.

The bishop presented no insoluble riddle to Leigh's mind. On the
contrary, he had met his type before and knew it well; but with Miss
Wycliffe the case was different. He recognized now the reason of
Cardington's inability to describe her, for a categorical account of
her features, or of what is commonly called her "good points," would
have left the essential quality untouched. Yet this quality was the
woman herself, and had fired Leigh's blood with a fever of longing that
made him reckless of his judgment. In fact, he was not now absorbed in
judging, but in realizing, the woman with whom he had fallen in love.

If she had appealed to him at any one moment more than at another, it
was when she took him into her confidence with that sidelong look, as
she slipped the novel into the large vase. Then, as at other times
during the evening, but then more particularly, she had betrayed her
consciousness of him as a young man, of herself as a woman and a
beauty. He saw that she had no desire to talk with him on the
impersonal plane of the mind, that she welcomed, rather than feared,
the discovery of her femininity, even in her political interests. She
might say this or that, as the fancy took her, but she knew it made no