And so, as her normal powers returned to her, she did not stay to question. She rose to obey.
“I have been given to understand,” said the Bishop, “that circumstances have arisen which have made you not unwilling to return to me for a time.”
“Yes, that is so,” Frances said, “if you care to make use of me.”
She stood before him in the book-lined study where so many of her hours had been spent in bitter bondage of body and spirit. The table with its typewriter was in its accustomed position in the window, and beyond the window she caught a glimpse of the grey stone of the cloister-arch, no longer decked in purple but splashed with the crimson of autumn leaves. The morning sun shone warmly upon it. It was a glorious day.
She had travelled down by a night-train, and not till the official hour of ten o’clock had the Bishop accorded her an interview. His austere countenance displayed no vestige of welcome even now, yet she had a curious conviction that he was not wholly displeased by her prompt reply to his invitation. His greeting of her, though cold, had been without acidity.
“Pray sit down!” he said, indicating a chair. “I have a few questions to ask you before we proceed any further. I beg that you will reply to them as concisely as possible.”
She took the seat facing him, the morning-light unsparingly upon her, and she knew that he looked at her with a closer attention than he had ever before bestowed upon her, as she did so.
“I will came to the point,” he said, in his curt, uncompromising way. “You realize of course that my message to you was not the result of chance, that I was actuated by a motive other than the mere desire to suit my own convenience?”
“Yes, I guessed that,” she answered quietly.
He nodded, and she thought that the ascetic lines of his face became a shade less grim as he proceeded. “I will not disguise from you the fact that as a secretary I have not yet found your equal, but that was not my reason for sending you that message. Now, Miss Thorold, kindly pay attention to what I am going to say, for time is short. I am due to conduct the service in the Cathedral in less than half-an-hour. I have a question to ask you primarily to which I must have a simple and unequivocal answer. When I discharged you some three months ago from my employment, I believed that an intrigue of an unworthy nature existed between my nephew and yourself. I ask you now—and you will answer me as before God—has there ever been any justification for that belief either before or since?”