"The Bishop, of course. Apart from his spiritual authority, he has claims upon me which I should be indeed ungrateful to ignore, and--and it meant much to be sure of your welcome." The real good feeling underlying the stilted words went straight to Marjory's sense of justice, and made her, metaphorically, pass the Bishop. Besides, this little discussion had, as it were, taken the personal flavour from the point at issue and left her contemptuously tolerant, as she had been many and many a time over the Reverend James's views of life. "And Lady George," she asked, categorically, magisterially; "has she also claims to be consulted?" He coughed. "I rather think she broached the subject. She--she saw I loved you." And here the man himself broke through the clerical coating. "For I do love you. It isn't preposterous. I would do my best to make you a good husband, and--and you could teach the school children anything you liked." "The Bishop wouldn't approve of that," she replied impatiently, yet in kinder tones. "Oh! Mr. Gillespie, it only shows how little you understand--how little you know. You would never have dreamed of such a thing, you and the Bishop, if you had had the least conception of what I really am. Perhaps I had no right to call it preposterous, but it is impossible, utterly impossible, and he ought to have seen it." This slur on his patron's acumen roused the young man's doggedness. "I do not see why it should be either preposterous or impossible, unless you love someone else." Then she turned and rent him, a whole torrent of indignant regret and dislike seeming to loosen her tongue. "Love! Oh! don't dare to mention the word. You don't understand it--it is profanation--I don't know anything about it myself, but _this_ must be wrong. Ah! Mr. Gillespie, for goodness sake let us talk about something else!" "Then I am to understand that you refuse," he began. "Refuse! of course I refuse." She felt she would have liked to go down among the whole posse of people--Paul Macleod among the number, for all she knew--who had deemed such a thing possible, and cry: "Listen! I have refused him, do you hear? I hate him, and you, too." But the next moment the very thought of coming amongst them, with him, as if of her own free will, seemed to her unbearable, and she stopped short in the headlong course downwards, which she had begun. "I suppose you couldn't help it," she said, with a catch in her breath, "and it is very kind of you, of course, and I am obliged and all that; but if you wouldn't mind leaving me I should prefer it. I don't want any tea, thanks; all I want is to get home." "I--I am sorry," he stammered, utterly taken aback. "Oh, don't be sorry!" she interrupted; "it has nothing to do with you, I assure you. Only it is so strange at first. Good-bye."