“I am worried about Eleanor,” said Lady Ella. “She is in the dining-room now,” she said, “having some dinner. She came in about a quarter past eight, half way through dinner.” “Where had she been?” asked the bishop. “Her dress was torn--in two places. Her wrist had been twisted and a little sprained.” “My dear!” “Her face--Grubby! And she had been crying.” “But, my dear, what had happened to her? You don't mean--?” Husband and wife stared at one another aghast. Neither of them said the horrid word that flamed between them. “Merciful heaven!” said the bishop, and assumed an attitude of despair. “I didn't know she knew any of them. But it seems it is the second Walshingham girl--Phoebe. It's impossible to trace a girl's thoughts and friends. She persuaded her to go.” “But did she understand?” “That's the serious thing,” said Lady Ella. She seemed to consider whether he could bear the blow. “She understands all sorts of things. She argues.... I am quite unable to argue with her.” “About this vote business?” “About all sorts of things. Things I didn't imagine she had heard of. I knew she had been reading books. But I never imagined that she could have understood....” The bishop laid down his knife and fork. “One may read in books, one may even talk of things, without fully understanding,” he said. Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. “It isn't like that,” she said at last. “She talks like a grown-up person. This--this escapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that. She seems to think--that she is not being educated properly here, that she ought to go to a College. As if we were keeping things from her....” The bishop reconsidered his plate. “But what things?” he said. “She says we get all round her,” said Lady Ella, and left the implications of that phrase to unfold. (9) For a time the bishop said very little. Lady Ella had found it necessary to make her first announcement standing behind him upon the hearthrug, but now she sat upon the arm of the great armchair as close to him as possible, and spoke in a more familiar tone. The thing, she said, had come to her as a complete surprise. Everything had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it was true, but it had never occurred to her mother that she had really been thinking--about such things as she had been thinking about. She had ranged in the library, and displayed a disposition to read the weekly papers and the monthly reviews. But never a sign of discontent. “But I don't understand,” said the bishop. “Why is she discontented? What is there that she wants different?” “Exactly,” said Lady Ella. “She has got this idea that life here is secluded in some way,” she expanded. “She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial' and--what was it?--'cloistered.' And she said--” Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection.