She sat inert, as one utterly exhausted, her eyes closed, her head bowed.

Then, very sharply, as though at a word of rebuke, she straightened herself and began to set in order the fruits of her morning’s work. She had laboured for five hours without a break, save for the brief interlude of Montague Rotherby’s interruption.

At the opening of the door she rose to her feet, but continued her task without turning. The Bishop of Burminster had a well-known objection to any forms of deference from inferiors. He expressed it now as he came forward to the table at which she had worked for so long.

“Why do you rise, Miss Thorold? Pray continue your task. You waste time by these observances.”

She straightened the last page and made quiet reply. “I think I have finished my task for this morning, my lord. In any case it is luncheon-time.”

“You have finished?” He took up the pile of typescript with eagerness, but in a moment tossed it down again with exasperation. “You call that finished!”

“For this morning,” repeated Frances Thorold, in her quiet, unmoved voice. “It is a lengthy, and a difficult, piece of work. But I hope to finish it to-night.”

“It must be finished to-night,” said the Bishop with decision. “It is essential that it should be handed to me for revision by nine o’clock. Kindly make a note of this, Miss Thorold! I must say I am disappointed by your rate of progress. I had hoped that work so purely mechanical would have taken far less time.”

He spoke with curt impatience, but no shade of feeling showed upon his secretary’s face. She said nothing whatever in reply.

The Bishop, lean, ascetic, forbidding of aspect, pulled at his clean-shaven chin with an irritable gesture. He had a bundle of letters in his hand which he flapped down upon the table before her.

“I had hoped for better things,” he said. “There are these to be answered, and when is time to be found for them if your whole day is to be occupied in the typing of my treatise—a very simple piece of work, mere, rough copy, after all, which will have to be done again from beginning to end after my revision?”

“I will take your notes upon those this afternoon,” said Frances. “I will have them ready for your signature in time to catch the midnight post.”

“Absurd!” said the Bishop. “They must go before then.”

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