This bitterness might have festered within him, but for the blessedness of Mary Elsmere's letters. She had seen the apology; she knew nothing of its causes. But she betrayed a joy that was almost too proud to know itself as joy; since what doubt could there ever have been but that right and nobleness would prevail? Catharine wrote the warmest and kindest of letters. But Mary's every word was balm, just because she knew nothing, and wrote out of the fulness of her mere faith in him, ready to let her trust take any shape he would. And though she knew nothing, she seemed by some divine instinct to understand also the pain that overshadowed the triumph; to be ready to sit silent with him before the irreparable. Day by day, as he read these letters, his heart burned within him; and Rose noted the growing restlessness. But he had heavy arrears of parish business upon him, of correspondence, of literary work. He struggled on, the powers of mind and body flagging, till one night, when he had been nearly a week at Maudeley, Rose came to him one evening, and said with a smile that had in it just a touch of sweet mockery-- "My dear friend, you are doing no good here at all! Go and see Mary!" He turned upon her, amazed. "She has not sent for me." Rose laughed out. "Did you expect her to be as modern as that?" He murmured-- "I have been waiting for a word." "What right had you to wait? Go and get it out of her! Where will you stay?" He gasped. "There is the farm at the head of the valley." "Telegraph to-night." He thought a little--the colour flooding into his face. And then he quietly went to Rose's writing-table, and wrote his telegram. CHAPTER XXI But before he took the midday train from Markborough to the North, on the following day, Meynell spent half an hour with his Bishop in the episcopal library. It was a strange meeting. When Bishop Craye first caught sight of the entering figure, he hurried forward, and as the door closed upon the footman, he seized Meynell's hand in both his own. "I see what you have gone through," he said, with emotion; "and you would not let me help you!" Meynell smiled faintly. "I knew you wished to help me--but--" Then his voice dropped, and the Bishop would not have pressed him for the world. They fell upon the anonymous letters, a comparatively safe topic, and the relation of Barron to them. Naturally Meynell gave the Bishop no hint whatever of the graver matter which had finally compelled Barron's surrender. He described his comparison of the Dawes letters with "a document in the young man's handwriting which I happened to have in my possession," and the gradual but certain conviction it had brought about. "I was extraordinarily blind, however, not to find the clue earlier." "It is not only you, my dear Meynell, that need regret it!" cried the Bishop. "I hope you have sometimes given a thought to the men on our side compelled to see the fight waged--"