Just at this moment the door was hurriedly opened, and the Reverend John Dodd entered the room. He was a stout man, his principal characteristics being an intense pleasure in ladies' society, and an obliviousness of the fact that he was no longer the pale slim young curate of earlier days. A life of almost absolute inactivity, which was forced upon him by his wife's jealousy of the rest of the sex, had rendered the muscular young Dodd of Oriel a perfect Daniel Lambert. Little irreverent boys from the village corners were in the habit of shouting "Jumbo" at the poor vicar. He was accustomed to pursue them, but in vain; a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and poor Mr. Dodd's futile efforts to capture his persecutors had become a bye-word. But the Reverend John Dodd's weak point, the red rag to the bull, the bee in his bonnet, was his devotion to the fair sex. Handsome Jack Dodd, as he had been once called, in his undergraduate and curate days, had been accustomed to find his attentions very highly appreciated. The habit grew on him, love-sick maidens sighed, and love-sick maidens wept, but all in vain. Handsome Jack Dodd, a very clerical butterfly, flitted from flower to flower. His admiration was freely, openly, ardently expressed for every variety of female beauty. Was Jack Dodd a flirt? Not a bit of it; he was merely a fancier, just as there are pigeon fanciers and poultry fanciers; so Handsome Jack Dodd was a fancier, an admirer, a worshipper of the entire female sex: that is to say, the select specimens of it. What he could have seen in Canon Drivel's daughter who can say? though, when he married Cecilia Drivel, she was a well-known light of London. She it was who, in the severity of her classic and rather imperial beauty, had posed to Mahlstick, R.A., for his well-known picture of Judith with the head of Holofernes. Alas! for poor Jack Dodd, he had assisted at the numerous sittings. He it was who had had the honour of sitting (that is to say lying prone on a bedstead of the period) for the headless trunk of Holofernes. To lie prone on a bedstead of any period, and have nothing to do for two mortal hours but gaze on the classic proportions of any lady--for Mahlstick was a strict disciplinarian and discouraged conversation--is enough to seal the fate of any man, even if he were of a less inflammable type than Handsome Jack. Miss Drivel was her father's only daughter, and ambitious; but four seasons, during which she was much admired, but never once received a serious offer, had warned the waning beauty not to neglect her opportunities. Miss Drivel was a lady of no imagination and strong will; the interest of her father, a notorious pluralist, was very great: Cecilia Drivel was determined to marry Dodd. She did so, and her victim became her obedient slave, and was duly inducted to the fat living of King's Warren. In all things Jack Dodd, as the weaker vessel, yielded to his wife. He had but