"Yes, Eminency; and my late diocesan said the same thing several years ago."

"You are suspicious, Mr. Rose."

"I have reason to be suspicacious, Eminency."

The cardinal threw up his hands. The gesture wedded irritation to despair. "You doubt me?" he all but gasped.

"I trusted Your Eminency in 1894; and——"

The bishop intervened: for cardinalitial human nature burst out in vermilion flames.

"George," he said, "I am witness of Zmnts's words."

"What's the good of that? Suppose that I take His Eminency's word! Suppose that in a couple of months he alters his mind, determines to mistake the large for the great and to perpetrate another pea-soup-and-streaky-bacon-coloured caricature of an electric-light-station! What then would be my remedy? Where would be my contract again?[Pg 37] And could I hale a prince of the church before a secular tribunal? Would I? Could I subpœna Your Lordship to testify against your Metropolitan and Provincial? Would I? Would you? My Lord Cardinal, I must speak, and you must hear me, as man to man. You are offering me Holy Orders on good grounds, on right and legitimate grounds, on grounds which I knew would be conceded sooner or later. I thank God for conceding them now.... You also are offering something in the shape of money." In his agitation, he suddenly rose, to Flavio's supreme discomfiture; and began to roll a cigarette from dottels in a tray on the mantel-piece.

[Pg 37]

"If I correctly interpret you, you are offering to me, who will be no man's pensioner, who will accept no man's gifts, a gift, a pension——"

"No," the cardinal very mildly interjected: "but restitution."

"Oh!" George ejaculated, suddenly sitting down, and staring like the martyr who, while yet the pagan pincers were at work upon his tenderest internals, beheld the angel-bearers of his amaranthine coronal.

"Amends and restitution," the cardinal repeated.

"What am I to say?" George addressed his cat and the bishop.

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