And thereupon Malling laid the case faithfully before the professor, describing not only the dinner in Hornton Street and his interview with Lady Sophia, but also the two sermons he had heard at St. Joseph's, and the rector's lamentable outburst of the previous night. This last, having a remarkably retentive memory, he reproduced in the main in Mr. Harding's own words, omitting only the rector's reference to his moral lapses. During the whole time he was speaking Stepton was closely engaged with the Cambridge marmalade, and showed no symptoms of attention to anything else. When he ceased, Stepton remarked: "Really, clergymen are far more to be depended upon for valuable manifestations than a rat or two and a hysterical kitchen-maid. Come to my room, Malling." The professor had a bedroom facing the sea. He led Malling to it, shut the door, gave Malling a cane chair, sat down himself, in a peculiar, crab-like posture, upon the bed, and said: "Now give me as minute a psychological study of the former and actual Henry Chichester as you can." Malling complied with this request as lucidly and tersely as he could, wasting no words. "Any unusual change in his outward man since you knew him two years ago?" asked the professor, when he had finished. Malling mentioned the question as to the curate's eyes and mouth which had risen in his mind, and added: "But the character of the man is so changed that it may have suggestioned me into feeling as if there were physical change in him, too." "More than would be inevitable in any man in a couple of years. And now as to his digestive organs." "Good heavens!" exclaimed Malling. The apparent vagaries of his companion very seldom surprised him, but this time he was completely taken aback. "Are they what they were? Assuming, on your part, a knowledge of what they were." "I don't know either in what condition they are now, or in what condition they were once." "Ah! Now I must draw up a report about last night. I'll come for that cup of tea to Minors--might almost as well have been Majors, even granting the military flavor--about five." Malling took his departure. At a quarter to five he heard the click of the garden gate, and looking out at the latticed window of the hall, he saw the professor walking sidewise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders. He went to let him in, and took him into the tiny drawing-room. "An odd shell for Harding!" observed the professor. "More suitable to a bantam than to a Cochin-China!" "It doesn't belong to him." "Nor he to it. Very wise and right of him to go back to Onslow Gardens."