He had only parted from her and her husband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visit to them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his lean person bulging with unanswered letters.
The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, unconventional to the core, the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction.

He had been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since.

He had neither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, but what powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy.

His Archbishop said that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, and that he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowed beneath his palace windows, without even a burial service.

His chaplains and secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him.