The Descent of Man and Other Stories

ed air of a man to whom, for the moment, tea is but a subordinate incident. Mrs. Fetherel's nervousness increased; and knowing that the surest way of dist

one. "I had to see my publisher, who has been behavin

nability to recall the name or nature of the work in question, and a mental

n emphasis which revealed his detection of her predicament

that delightful story of the poor consumptive girl w

ters-" the Bishop

y enough to put up a beautiful memorial window t

ty and disease." The Bishop gave the satisfied sigh of the workman who reviews his completed task

w of it in the 'Reredos'!" cried Mrs. Fetherel,

ified; but the public wants more highly seasoned fare, and the approval of a thoughtful churchwoman carries less weight than the sensational comments of an illiterate journalist." The Bishop lent a meditative ey

ed Mrs. Fetherel.

father, it would probably raise a general controversy in the newspapers, and I might count on a sale of ten or fifteen thousand within the next year. If he described her as morbid or decadent, it might even run to twenty thousand; but that is more than I permit myself to hope. In fact, I should be satisfied with any general charge of immorality." The Bishop sighed again. "I need hardly tell you that I am act

iece sympathetically.

was for this reason that, in writing 'Through a Glass,' I addressed my appeal more especially to the less well-endowed, hoping by the example of my heroine to stimulate the collection of small

ociation in Mrs. Fetherel's vibrating nerve-

ooked at her

ot be read at all! How

sing an authoress," he said. "Indeed, I should not have d

consciousness of her involuntary self

to brush away her scruples, "I came here partly to speak to

el blushed

yet?" the Bis

ven't touched your tea, and it must be qu

days, he had been known to continue a sermon after the senior warden had looked four times at his wat

he cup she had filled. "

at ignoble compromises one may be driven in such cases!..." He paused, as though to give her the opportunity of confirming this conjecture, but she preserved an apprehensive silence, and he went on, as though taking up the second point in his sermon-"Or, again, the name may have taken your fancy without your

lusions at variance with his own by always assuming that his premises were among the necessary laws of thought. This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any classifications but his own, created an element in which the first condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint; so that his niece, as she listened, seemed to feel Mrs. Gollinger's Mechlin cap spreading its conventual shadow over her rebellious brow and the "Revue de Paris" at her elbow turning into a copy of the "Reredos." She had meant to assure her uncle that she was quite aware of the significance of th

ied, flourishing a yellow envelope. "M

huns every opportunity of browbeating her; and to the generous and impulsive being whose bills are paid with philosophic calm. Mrs. Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt from trials of this nature, for her husband, if undistinguished by pronounced brutality or indifference, had at least the negative merit of being her intellectual inferior. Landscape gardeners, who are aware of the usefulness of a valley in emphasizing the height of a hill, can form an idea of the account to which an accomplished woman may turn such deficiencies; and it need scarcely be said that Mrs. Fetherel had made the most of her opportunities. It was agreeably

resent, at least negatively, an attack on the sanctity of the hearth; and her anticipations were heightened by a sense of the unpardonableness of her act. Mrs. Fetherel's relations with he

e and the hopeless aberration of his smile. Nothing, to the observant, is more indicative of a man's character and circumstances than his way of entering a room. The Bishop of Ossining, for instance, brought with him not only an atmosphere of episcopal authority, but an implied opinion on the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and on the attitude of the church toward divorce; while the a

e yellow envelope above Mrs. Fetherel's clutch; and knowing the uselessness of begging

at dignitary. "She bores us all hor

t?" said his wif

just this minute come. I sa

the Bishop, settling himself in h

ringly. "Don't let John's nonse

read. Here, listen to this, ladies and gentlemen: 'In this age of festering pessimism and decadent depravity, it i

lights on a novel as sweetly inoffensive as Paula Fetherel's "Fast and Loose." Mrs. Fetherel is, we believe, a new hand at fiction, and her work reveals frequent traces of inexperience; but these are more than atoned for by her pure, fresh view of life and her altogether unfashionable regard for the