had, however, kept himself in the background, and he was now to be
presented to the great man for the first time.

The archdeacon's feelings were of a much stronger nature. He was not
exactly the man to overlook his own slighted claims, or to forgive
the preference shown to another. Dr. Proudie was playing Venus to
his Juno, and he was prepared to wage an internecine war against
the owner of the wished-for apple, and all his satellites, private
chaplains, and others.

Nevertheless, it behoved him also to conduct himself towards the
intruder as an old archdeacon should conduct himself to an incoming
bishop; and though he was well aware of all Dr. Proudie's abominable
opinions as regarded dissenters, church reform, the hebdomadal
council, and such like; though he disliked the man, and hated the
doctrines, still he was prepared to show respect to the station of
the bishop. So he and Mr. Harding called together at the palace.

His lordship was at home, and the two visitors were shown through the
accustomed hall into the well-known room where the good old bishop
used to sit. The furniture had been bought at a valuation, and
every chair and table, every bookshelf against the wall, and every
square in the carpet was as well known to each of them as their own
bedrooms. Nevertheless they at once felt that they were strangers
there. The furniture was for the most part the same, yet the place
had been metamorphosed. A new sofa had been introduced, a horrid
chintz affair, most unprelatical and almost irreligious; such a sofa
as never yet stood in the study of any decent High Church clergyman
of the Church of England. The old curtains had also given way. They
had, to be sure, become dingy, and that which had been originally