This is not the time nor the place to
break a controversial lance with Dr. Oliphant. We shall content
ourselves with registering a solemn protest against the unparagoned
cynicism of a Conservative government which thus gambles not merely with
its own security, but what is far more unpardonable with the security of
the Nation and the welfare of the State."
The subject of this ponderous censure received Mark in the same room
where two and a half years ago the late Bishop had decided that the
Third Altar in St. Agnes' Church was an intolerable excrescence.
Nowadays the room was less imposing, not more imposing indeed than the
room of a scholarly priest who had been able to collect a few books and
buy such pieces of ancient furniture as consorted with his severe taste.
Dr. Oliphant himself, a tall spare man, seeming the taller and more
spare in his worn purple cassock, with clean-shaven hawk's face and
black bushy eyebrows most conspicuous on account of his grey hair, stood
before the empty summer grate, his long lean neck out-thrust, his arms
crossed behind his back, like a gigantic and emaciated shadow of
Napoleon. Mark felt no embarrassment in genuflecting to salute him; the
action was spontaneous and was not dictated by any ritualistic
indulgence.
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