Don't suppose he was a hypocrite or a Pharisee. He was as honest as most men, and better than many Christians. He was a bachelor, and wealthy; but if he had amassed a good deal of public money, he had also displayed a good deal of public spirit, and had done many princely and even some kind actions. His family were not presentable, making a livelihood by unmentionable practices, such as shop-keeping and the like. Still he cut them with moderation, having maintained affable though clandestine relations with his two maiden aunts, who lived and died in Thames Street, and having twice assisted a nephew, though he declined seeing him, who was a skipper of a Russian brig. He was a little High-Church. But though a disciplinarian in ecclesiastical matters, and with notions about self-mortification, his rule as master of the great school he had once governed had been kindly and popular as well as firm. I do not know exactly what interest got him his bishopric. Perhaps it was his reputation only; and that he was thinking of duty, and his fasts, and waked in his cell one morning with a mitre on instead of his nightcap. The Trappist, mayhap, in digging his grave had lighted on a pot of gold. "I had no idea," exclaimed Miss Blunket, when the Bishop's apron and silk stockings had moved with the Rev. Dives Marlowe to the opposite extremity of the drawing-room, where the attentive Rector was soon deep in demonstrations, which evidently interested the right reverend prelate much, drawn from some manuscript notes of an ancestor of Dives's who had filled that see, which had long known him no more, and where he had been sharp in his day in looking up obscure rights and neglected revenues. "I had no idea the Bishop was so young; he's by _no means_ an old-looking man; and so very admirable a prelate--is not he?" "He has neglected one of St. Paul's conditions though," said Sir Jekyl; "but you will not think the worse of him for that. It may be mended, you know." "What's that?" inquired Miss Blunket. "Why, he's not the husband of one wife." "Nonsense, you wretch!" cried Miss Blunket, with a giggle, jerking a violet which she was twiddling between her fingers at the Baronet. "He has written a great deal, has not he?" continued Miss Blunket. "His tract on mortification has gone to fifteen thousand copies, I see by the newspaper." "I wonder he has never married," interposed Lady Blunket, drowsily, with her usual attention to the context. "I wonder he never tried it as a species of mortification," suggested Sir Jekyl. "You horrid Vandal! Do you hear him, mamma?" exclaimed Miss Blunket. Lady Blunket rather testily--for she neither heard nor understood very well, and her daughter's voice was shrill--asked-- "_What_ is it? You are always making mountains of molehills, my dear, and _startling_ one."