"I quite believe that!" said Walden, smiling--"I know one of them!"
The Bishop glanced at him, and laughed.
"You mean Putwood Leveson?" he said--"He seems a mischievous fool-- but I don't suppose there is any real harm in him, is there?"
"Real harm?"--and John flared up in a blaze of wrath--"He is the most pernicious scoundrel that ever masqueraded in the guise of a Christian!"
The Bishop paused in his walk up and down, and clasping his hands behind his back, an old habit of his, looked quizzically at his friend. A smile, kindly and almost boyish, lightened the grey pallor of his worn face.
"Why, John!" he said--"you are actually in a temper! Your mental attitude is evidently that of squared fists and 'Come on!' What has roused the slumbering lion, eh?"
"It doesn't need a lion to spring at Leveson,"--said Walden, contemptuously--"A sheep would do it! The tamest cur that ever crawled would have spirit enough to make a dash for a creature so unutterably mean and false and petty! I may as well admit to you at once that I myself nearly struck him!"
"You did?" And Bishop Brent's grave dark eyes flashed with a sudden suspicion of laughter.
"I did. I know it was not Churchman-like,--I know it was a case of 'kicking against the pricks.' But Leveson's 'pricks' are too much like hog's bristles for me to endure with patience!"
The Bishop assumed a serious demeanour.
"Come, come, let me hear this out!" he said--"Do you mean to tell me that you--YOU, John--actually struck a brother minister?"
"No--I do not mean to tell you anything of the kind, my Lord Bishop!" answered Walden, beginning to laugh. "I say that I 'nearly' struck him,--not quite! Someone else came on the scene at the critical moment, and did for me what I should certainly have done for myself had I been left to it. I cannot say I am sorry for the impulse!"
"It sounds like a tavern brawl,"--said the Bishop, shaking his head dubiously--"or a street fight. So unlike you, Walden! What was it all about?"
"The fellow was slandering a woman,"--replied Walden, hotly-- "Poisoning her name with his foul tongue, and polluting it by his mere utterance--contemptible brute! I should like to have horsewhipped him---"
"Stop, stop!" interrupted the Bishop, stretching out his thin long white hand, on which one single amethyst set in a plain gold ring, shone with a pale violet fire--"I am not sure that I quite follow you, John! What woman is this?"