"So I'm playing a part, am I!" he said to himself. "Why should your Holiness trouble yourself over it, if I am! Not because you're so careful of the Governor's feelings; not by a long shot! It's because you choose to think Jessica Holme is too good for me! That's where the shoe pinches! Perhaps you'd like to play at that game yourself, eh?"
He walked jauntily up the street—toward the door with the little barred window.
"The old man is fond of her. He thinks I mean to settle down and let the moss grow over my ears, and he'll do the proper thing. It'll be a good way to put my head above water and keep it there. It must be soon, though!" A smile came to his face, a pretentious, boastful smile, and his shining patent-leathers stepped more confidently. "She's the finest-looking girl in this town, even without her eyes. She may get back her sight sometime. But even if she doesn't, blindness in a wife might not be such a bad thing, after all!"
CHAPTER V THE BISHOP SPEAKS
Inside the study, meanwhile, the bishop was greeting Harry Sanderson. He had officiated at his ordination and liked him. His eyes took in the simple order of the room, lingering with a light tinge of disapproval upon the violin case in the corner, and with a deeper shade of question upon the jewel on the other's finger—a pigeon-blood ruby in a setting curiously twisted of the two initial letters of his name.
There came to his mind for an instant a whisper of early prodigalities and wildnesses which he had heard. For the lawyer who had listened to Harry Sanderson's recital on the night of the making of the will had not considered it a professional disclosure. He had thought it a "good story," and had told it at his club, whence it had percolated at leisure through the heavier strata of town-talk. The tale, however, had seemed rather to increase than to discourage popular interest in Harry Sanderson. The bishop knew that those whose approval had been withheld were in the hopeless minority, and that even these could not have denied that he possessed desirable qualities—a manner by turns sparkling and grave, picturesqueness in the pulpit, and the unteachable tone of blood—and had infused new life into a generally sleepy parish. He had dismissed the whisper with a smile, but oddly enough it recurred to him now at sight of the ruby ring.
"I looked in to tell you a bit of news," said the bishop. "I've just come from David Stires—he has a letter from Van Lennap, the great eye-surgeon of Vienna. He disagrees with the rest of them—thinks Jessica's case may not be hopeless."
The cloud that Hugh's call had left on Harry's countenance lifted.