“I see they have hewn off the head without harming it,” said Gabriel, stooping to pick it up from the corner into which it had been tossed. “With your permission, sir, I will bear it to the Palace. Bishop Coke will value it, and here it would but be cast away as rubbish.” “Ay, sir, do,” said the verger. “The Bishop, God bless’un, he do set great store by all old statutes, and so do his son, Dr. William Coke; and Mistress Hilary Unett she takes after ’m; seems to run in the family like. For my part, I be glad Waghorn set the soldiers on useless stocks and stones and spared the glass windows, for the cathedral do be mortal cold on windy days at service time.” This, then, explained in part Hilary’s angry mood. Perhaps had they met under less trying circumstances, she might have been less cruel. Very sore at heart, Gabriel went out again, encountering Joscelyn Heyworth not far from the Palace. “What plunder are you carrying away, you sacrilegious man?” exclaimed the young Captain, with his genial laugh. “When an honest man turns thief he always betrays himself. What are you hiding under your scarf ends?” “A bishop’s head,” said Gabriel, grimly. “Oh! so this explains some of the lady’s wrath.” “Yes, no wonder she was angry. I am taking this to her grandfather--Bishop Coke.” “You would do much better to throw it down on the green, and give up the whole connection. What have you to do now with bishops, either in stone or in the flesh? And as to their granddaughters--may heaven preserve me from ever again escorting home an episcopal lady. Like Benedick, ‘I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.’” “You don’t know her,” said Gabriel. “To-day she was very naturally incensed.” “Now be a sensible man, Gabriel, and cast that head into the kennel, for I assure you its stony curls are not more stony than the heart of Mistress Hilary.” “Be silent!” said Gabriel, hotly. “I tell you that you do not know her. _Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner_, as the proverb hath it.” “Then let us hope the lady will apply that sentiment to the cure of her pride. For truly she knows much more of you than she did before I crossed her path.” “What do you mean?” said Gabriel, aware that Joscelyn was often daringly outspoken and unconventional, and fearing that he might only have angered Hilary the more. “I told her of the night at Kineton, when, in your delirium the name of Hilary was eternally on your lips.” “So you have known all this time?” “To be sure; and now she knows one or two eminently wholesome truths.” “I fear you but annoyed her yet more. What did she say?” “Well, she turned whiter than this old prelate’s head, and I could have sworn she was going to soften. But nothing of the sort; she remained as stony as this effigy, and so we parted with freezing politeness and ceremony. Give her up, Gabriel; why let her make your life a misery?”