"Mr. Emmet, I venture to say that I give you the benefit of a very considerable doubt in assuming that you have not given my daughter statutory grounds for divorce by your conduct with some other woman. It seems passing strange that you should have been so acquiescent under an arrangement which you describe as such a hardship, if you were not kept so by a consciousness of duplicity. But I have no desire to pursue that line of inquiry. This so-called marriage must be dissolved. Let us admit that you have not given statutory grounds; there are other grounds concerning which there exists no manner of doubt whatever. I do not speak now of the eternal fitness of things, of those humane and ethical considerations to which I find you impervious, but of legal grounds. My daughter cannot bring an action for non-support against you, because she left you voluntarily. It remains for you to institute proceedings of divorce against her on the ground of desertion. We will not defend the suit." There was something almost clairvoyant in the bishop's guess of the mayor's infidelity, for pride had caused Felicity to keep Lena out of her confession. She had told only as much as she chose to tell, leaving her father to imagine himself in possession of all the facts. Had she told all, she would have strengthened her case at the expense of her pride; but this was a sacrifice she could not bring herself to make. Before the bishop finished speaking, his listener had discerned that the veiled accusation was a guess, and nothing more. This knowledge helped him to remain apparently unmoved. It did more. It showed him Felicity's pride in remaining silent concerning a rival so much beneath her. This had been her attitude all along,--to consider Lena beneath contempt,--and he burned to make her suffer for it. He was filled with fury against himself also for yielding at the last to his passion for Lena, after a long and successful struggle. It was this that made it impossible for him to say plainly that he would not give Felicity up, though he had tormented her father by implying it. This method of revenge was the only one now left him. "But your religion," he suggested, with a sneer. "Excuse me," the bishop returned, with patient dignity, "if I feel that I am not accountable to you for the manner in which I defend or fail to defend the canons of my Church. My daughter acts as an individual who is of age, and her reckoning is with the civil law. To clear up your evident confusion of mind, I will explain that I violate no canons of the Church in eliminating myself officially from the situation. I am merely suggesting to you, as one individual to another, a way out of a most unhappy complication. Besides, you evade the hard fact that this was no marriage in the full sense of the word." Emmet realised that his shaft had fallen short, and the knowledge stung him to fury.