"Miss Vancourt,—of Abbot's Manor."
"Miss Vancourt!" Bishop Brent looked, as he felt, utterly bewildered. "Miss Vancourt! My dear Walden, you surprise me! Did I not write to you—do you not know—-"
"Oh, I know all that is reported of her,"—said John, quickly—"And I remember what you wrote. But it's a mistake, Brent! In fact, if you will exonerate me for speaking bluntly, it's a lie! There never was a gentler, sweeter woman than Maryllia Vancourt,—and perhaps there never was one more basely or more systematically calumniated!"
The Bishop took a turn up to the farther end of the room. Then he came back and confronted Walden with an authoritative yet kindly air.
"Look me straight in the face, John!"
John obeyed. There was a silence, while Brent scanned slowly and with appreciative affection the fine intellectual features, brave eyes, and firm, yet tender mouth of the man whom he had, since the days of their youth together, held dearest in his esteem among all other men he had ever known, while Walden, in his turn, bore the sad and searching gaze without flinching. Then the Bishop laid one hand gently on his shoulder.
"So it has come, John!" he said.
Then and then only the brave eyes fell,—then and then only the firm mouth trembled. But Walden was not the man to shirk any pain or confusion to himself in matters of conscience.
"I suppose it has!" he answered, simply.
The Bishop sat down, and, seemingly out of long habit, raised his eyes to the blandly smiling Virgin and Child above him.