“Oh, well, I’m bold enough,” said the young man, easily; “if I had not been, I never would have asked you to marry me; and I’m happy enough—­that’s because I did ask you.  But what if he says no,” continued the youth; “what if he says he has greater ambitions for you, just as they say in books, too?  What will you do?  Will you run away with me?  I can borrow a coach just as they used to do, and we can drive off through the Park and be married, and come back and ask his blessing on our knees—­unless he should overtake us on the elevated.”

“That,” said the girl, decidedly, “is flippant, and I’m going to leave you.  I never thought to marry a man who would be frightened at the very first.  I am greatly disappointed.”

She stepped back into the drawing-room and pulled the curtains to behind her, and then opened them again and whispered, “Please don’t be long,” and disappeared.  He waited, smiling, to see if she would make another appearance, but she did not, and he heard her touch the keys of the piano at the other end of the drawing-room.  And so, still smiling and with her last words sounding in his ears, he walked slowly up the stairs and knocked at the door of the bishop’s study.  The bishop’s room was not ecclesiastic in its character.  It looked much like the room of any man of any calling who cared for his books and to have pictures about him, and copies of the beautiful things he had seen on his travels.  There were pictures of the Virgin and the Child, but they were those that are seen in almost any house, and there were etchings and plaster casts, and there were hundreds of books, and dark red curtains, and an open fire that lit up the pots of brass with ferns in them, and the blue and white plaques on the top of the bookcase.  The bishop sat before his writing-table, with one hand shading his eyes from the light of a red-covered lamp, and looked up and smiled pleasantly and nodded as the young man entered.  He had a very strong face, with white hair hanging at the side, but was still a young man for one in such a high office.  He was a man interested in many things, who could talk to men of any profession or to the mere man of pleasure, and could interest them in what he said, and force their respect and liking.  And he was very good, and had, they said, seen much trouble.

“I am afraid I interrupted you,” said the young man, tentatively.

“No, I have interrupted myself,” replied the bishop.  “I don’t seem to make this clear to myself,” he said, touching the paper in front of him, “and so I very much doubt if I am going to make it clear to any one else.  However,” he added, smiling, as he pushed the manuscript to one side, “we are not going to talk about that now.  What have you to tell me that is new?”

The younger man glanced up quickly at this, but the bishop’s face showed that his words had had no ulterior meaning, and that he suspected nothing more serious to come than the gossip of the clubs or a report of the local political fight in which he was keenly interested, or on their mission on the East Side.  But it seemed an opportunity to Latimer.