Should She Have Left Him? — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

122 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? — A happy thought struck her. The bishop was in town. She would call upon him. Ordering a carriage she was driven to the episcopal residence. She found the prelate in, and to him unfolded her woes. He was distressed, as a shepherd naturally would be when he heard that one of the lambs of his flock was so involved. He proposed that he should go to Dorothy at once, and under the mantle of his spiritual authority instruct her as to the course she should pursue, which, of course, was in the direc- tion in which Mrs. Courtenay had been laboring. While the good lady was willing, indeed anxious, that he should do so, still she was doubtful as to the outcome. What she wanted at that time was to be advised as to her own duty. For the sake of the great ends to be gained, could she give a seeming acquiesence to Dorothy’s relations for a time? Perhaps it was not flattering to the great lady, but the bishop's mind was more on Dorothy’s posi- tion than that of her mother’s. He required the story to be told him again, stopping its recital from time to time to inquire into points that were not plain. Finally, when he had the whole story in ali its details, he paced up and down his study in deep thought, the while Mrs. Courtenay waited patiently. “It is very distressing,” he said, emerging from his thought. ‘I cannot see that Mr. Trescotte or Dorothy are in any way to blame, until, learning the truth, they determined to continue to live together. There is one view of this question which does not seem to have been considered by anyone of all those Comicbook<s C@ 3