The bright sun filled the study with a garish light reflected from the snow without, and the bishop pulled down the heavy shades, introducing thereby an effect of twilight in the room. At the same time the wood fire in the grate, which had previously seemed pale and thin, took on a ruddy and cheerful activity, relieved from the overpowering competition of the sun. The mayor finally arrived, half an hour behind the time he had appointed, drawn in his sleigh by the pacer that had stood by him so gallantly in his race with Anthony Cobbens. He fastened the mare to the post with careful deliberation, conscious the while that he might be under inspection from behind the drawn curtains of Felicity's room. When he entered the bishop's study, it was evident at once that he came in no very conciliatory mood. The bold glance of his eyes was a trifle more bold than usual and swept the room rapidly, as if he anticipated seeing Felicity there. Something of disappointment and resentment seemed to show itself in his manner, as he took the chair the bishop indicated; and now he waited, with the instinct of the politician, for his opponent to show his hand. The bishop had always hated this man, and never more so than now. In addition to his special reason for hostility, Emmet's type was one peculiarly distasteful to him. Just as he had catalogued Leigh as a Westerner, and had assumed certain characteristics in him, so he had put Emmet, from the first, into the class of loud-voiced, big-limbed, heavy-heeled centurions. It made no difference that the mayor showed marked deviations from the type; there was just enough of the feminine in his judge to keep him true to his prejudices, and never were they so nearly justified as now. He saw that he must make a beginning, and did so with his usual circumspection. His words were carefully selected to avoid giving offence, but the gist of their meaning was that he waited for his visitor to give an account of himself. "I should like to speak in the presence of my wife," Emmet announced uncompromisingly. "My daughter will not be present at this interview," the bishop declared, with marked austerity, "nor at any other interview that may subsequently become necessary, though I hope we shall come to such a satisfactory understanding to-day as to make further conferences superfluous. This arrangement is with her entire consent, or rather, is the fulfilment of her expressed wish. I must protest also against your designation of my daughter as your wife. She is not such in the full sense of the term. She has never appeared with you publicly as your wife, but by her desertion of you at the very altar she emphatically showed that she realised her mistake at once and repudiated it."