"I think Mrs. Flaxman will have arranged something," said Meynell, with a smile—detecting the weariness of the political Atlas.
And indeed Rose had all her dispositions made. They found her in the drawing-room, amid a bevy of bright gowns and comely faces, illumined by the cheerful light of a big wood fire—a circle of shimmering stuffs and gems, the blaze sparkling on the pointed slippers, the white necks and glossy hair of the girls, and on the diamonds of their mothers.
But Rose, the centre of the circle, sprang up at once, at sight of her two gros bonnets.
"The green drawing-room!" she murmured in Meynell's ear, and tripped on before them, while the incoming crowd of gentlemen, mingling with the ladies, served to mask the movement.
Not, however, before the Bishop had perceived the withdrawal of the politician and the heretic. He saw that Canon France, who followed him, had also an eye to the retreating figures.
"I trust we too shall have our audience." said the Bishop, ironically.
Canon France shrugged his shoulders, smiling.
Then his small shrewd eyes scanned the Bishop intently. Nothing in that delicate face beyond the sentiments proper to the situation?—the public situation? As to the personal emotion involved, that, the Canon knew, was for the time almost exhausted. The Bishop had suffered much during the preceding months—in his affections, his fatherly feeling toward his clergy, in his sense of the affront offered to Christ's seamless vesture of the Church. But now, France thought, pain had been largely deadened by the mere dramatic interest of the prospect ahead, by the anodyne of an immense correspondence, and of a vast increase in the business of the day, caused by the various actions pending.
Nothing else—new and disturbing—in the Bishop's mind? He moved on, chatting and jesting with the young girls who gathered round him. He was evidently a favourite with them, and with all nice women. Finally he sank into an armchair beside Lady Helen Varley, exchanging Mrs. Flaxman's cossetting for hers. His small figure was almost lost in the armchair. The firelight danced on his slender stockinged legs, on his episcopal shoe buckles, on the cross which adorned his episcopal breast, and then on the gleaming snow of his hair, above his blue eyes with their slight unearthliness, so large and flower-like in his small white face. He seemed very much at ease—throwing off all burdens.
No!—the Slander which had begun to fly through the diocese, like an arrow by night, had not yet touched the Bishop.