"I haven't been able to prevent myself asking that question lately," she said. "I was very much troubled by the way you behaved"--another phrase to which his ears were quite unaccustomed from her--"about the Coopers. When you thought that the Bishop had offered Surley to Mr. Leadbetter you didn't tell me anything about it, but you took me over there so that you might tell _them_, though you knew what disappointment it would bring them. Then when they told you that the living had been offered to Denis, you congratulated them, but you spoke in such a different way to me as we came home; and you did your best to stir up trouble about it before you knew that Denis had refused the offer. And even when that did come out, you couldn't give him any credit for what was a fine action on his part, as I think, but could only talk about the way his sisters were served right in doing what they had, and put it about what they had done, to discredit them." The Vicar had in fact arrived at the conclusion that Rhoda and Ethel had opened the Bishop's letter addressed to their brother, which it is probable that no one else would have guessed at; and righteous indignation at such an action had been his chief contribution to the talk that had resulted from the Bishop's offer and its refusal. It was somewhat disturbing to find that his wife had not taken that indignation at its face value. He defended himself at some length against her charge of uncharity, but her silence and her downcast look warned him that he was not impressing her, and as the ground was not of the strongest he relinquished it. "But we will have an end to all this," he said, catching at his authority, so unexpectedly being questioned. "I can quite see that my silence as to the Graftons may have been misunderstood by you. The fact is that for months I have been coming to see that my position here will become impossible unless the Graftons refrain from meddling in affairs which are my concern and not theirs. I went down to the Abbey yesterday to have it out with Grafton once and for all. Either I must be allowed my own way here in matters which appertain to my office, and that must be definitely understood, or else I must fight for it, and all pretence of intimacy and friendship must be abandoned between us. Matters have come to a crisis. I found Grafton quite irreconcileable. He takes his stand, as a rich man of that type always does, upon his money." "Oh, Albert!" she exclaimed.