CHAPTER II.
HE KNEW THAT IT WAS A TROUBLESOME PROCESS, BECOMING A GOOD CLERGYMAN, SO HE DETERMINED TO BECOME A GOOD PREACHER INSTEAD.
Phyllis sat alone in one of the drawing rooms, waiting until the hour of four should arrive and bring into her presence the Rev.George Holland, to plead his cause to her--to plead to be returned to her favor.

He had written to her to say that he would make such an attempt.
She had looked on him with favor for several months--with especial favor for three months, for three months had just passed since she had promised to marry him, believing that to be the wife of a clergyman who, though still young, had two curates to do the rough work for him--clerical charwomen, so to speak--would make her the happiest of womankind.

Mr.Holland was rector of St.Chad's, Battenberg Square, and he was thought very highly of even by his own curates, who intoned all the commonplace, everyday prayers in the liturgy for him, leaving him to do all the high-class ones, and to repeat the Commandments.

(A rector cannot be expected to do journeyman's work, as it were; and it is understood that a bishop will only be asked to intone three short prayers, those from behind a barrier, too; an archbishop refuses to do more than pronounce the benediction.) The Rev.George Holland was a good-looking man of perhaps a year or two over thirty.

He did not come of a very good family--a fact which probably accounted for his cleverness at Oxford and in the world.