“Good gracious, Mr. Shapleigh!” cried Mrs. Shapleigh in much horror and distress. “If Mr. Skelton doesn’t believe in a hell, we might as well give up asking him to dinner, because the bishop is coming next month, and he’ll be certain to hear of it; and what will he say when he hears that we have been entertaining a person like Richard Skelton, who flies in the face of everything the bishop says we ought to believe!” Mr. Shapleigh shook his head with waggish despair, and declared the dinner was out of the question. This, of course, renewed Mrs. Shapleigh’s determination to have it, who reflected that, after all, the bishop might not hear of it, or perhaps he might die before his annual visitation came off--she had heard he had something the matter with his liver, anyhow. Sylvia listened to the discussion calmly--she was used to this kind of thing; and as her father and mother never grew at all angry in these matrimonial tiffs, she did not mind them, having had a lifetime to become accustomed to them. But she felt acutely anxious about meeting Skelton, and, in a feminine way, about the dinner. She wanted everything to go off well, but with a person as wonderful as Mrs. Shapleigh, it was not safe to count on anything. In due time old Tom called at Deerchase, and was received by Skelton with more courtesy and deference than ever before in his life. Skelton met him in the library--a part of the building erected the first year after Skelton left Princeton. It was a noble room, and from the floor to the lofty ceiling were books, books, books. Old Tom had never seen so many books together in his life before. Skelton had changed but little. As a young man he had looked middle-aged; as a middle-aged man he looked young. His hair had a few grey threads in it, and Mrs. Shapleigh’s eager eye discovered a small place on the top of his head, about as big as a half dollar, where the hair was getting thin; but it took Mrs. Shapleigh to find this out--Mr. Shapleigh didn’t observe it at all. Skelton’s only remarkable feature were his eyes, which were as black and soft and fascinating as ever. His manner had lost all of its early superciliousness--he knew too much then to be anything but simple and unassuming. But undoubtedly there was something imposing in his personality. He greeted old Tom cordially, and inquired after Mrs. Shapleigh and little Sylvia. “You mean tall Sylvia, I presume,” said old Tom, laughing. “She is nearly as tall as I am, and deucedly pretty, if I have any eyes. Pardon an old man’s fondness, Skelton.” “No apology is needed. I am sure she is a lovely young woman; but I begin to realise how many milestones I have passed when I think of her as a woman grown.” “She’s more than grown; she has been of a marriageable age for some years--but a proud creature she is. She gives all sorts of flippant reasons for refusing good matches; but the fact is, nobody is quite good enough for her ladyship--so Sylvia thinks.”