Whether this insinuation produced some effect upon the maid, or whether the nervousness she had exhibited during the whole evening culminated coincidently, none present could know, but no sooner had the words left his lips than a finger-bowl which she held fell from her hands and broke in a hundred glittering fragments on the carpet. At this second proof of incompetence the bishop started irritably, and looked at her without a word. That look was sufficient. A professor unexpectedly roared out upon by his class, a clergyman breaking down in a sermon, could scarcely have experienced a keener sense of professional failure and humiliation than the unfortunate girl knew at that moment. To the bishop's astonishment, she suddenly raised her apron to her eyes and burst into tears. "That will do, Lena," Miss Wycliffe said quietly. "We 've had enough excitement for one evening. You may go; and send Mary in your place." "What's the matter with the girl?" the bishop asked, when the door had closed behind her. There was an odd blending of annoyance and compassion in his tone. "Lena hasn't been well," his daughter replied, "for some days." "Then let her rest awhile," he said; "and call the doctor, if it's necessary." The incident seemed to distract him entirely from his previous thoughts. "It is just such a scene as this," he continued, "that reminds one of the hidden tragedies going on all the time in the lives about us. Lena is usually a very quiet and skilful girl, and it has been a pleasure to have her about. Perhaps she's going through some love affair, as big a thing in her existence as the chief events in ours are to us. Girls of that class so often acquire a certain gentleness and breeding from association, and then marry some rough coal-heaver or mechanic. It's a pity--a great pity." "She's pretty enough to meet a King Cophetua," Cardington remarked judicially. The observation was directed at Miss Wycliffe, and was an effort to make her forget the conversation in which his animus had led him to transgress even his elastic limits with her. There was something almost comical in the concerned expression of his light blue eyes, no longer fierce, as he gazed at her. But she met this dumb appeal coldly. "If you will excuse me, father," she said presently, "I 'll go up to Lena's room, and see whether she 's really ill." The two men, left alone, drank their coffee, and then went into the bishop's study to smoke. As the door remained open, Cardington seated himself in a chair that commanded a vista of the drawing-room, and lingered on in the hope of Felicity's return, until the first lights of Emmet's triumphal procession began to flash past the windows from the street beyond. "Here comes the Imperator up the Via Sacra!" he commented, rising. "I must go out and see whether he has a slave behind him to whisper in his ear, _Memento te hominem esse_."