the
disease that it has touched, and at first, often grow worse rather than
better. Well is it for them if they return while yet there is time,
before blindness have come over their eyes, and hardness over their
heart.

Perhaps this was the true history of much that grieved poor Mrs. King,
and distressed Ellen, during the remainder of the summer. Anxious as
Mrs. King had been to bring her sons up in the right way, there was
something in Mr. Cope's manner of talking to them that brought things
closer home to them, partly from their being put in a new light, and
partly from his being a man, and speaking with a different kind of
authority.

Alfred did not like his last conversation--it was little more than his
mother and Miss Selby had said--but then he had managed to throw it off,
and he wanted to do so again. It was pleasanter to him to think himself
hardly treated, than to look right in the face at all his faults; he knew
it was of no use to say he had none, so he lumped them all up by calling
himself a sinful creature, like every one else; and thus never felt the
weight of them at all, because he never thought what they were.

And yet, because Mr. Cope's words had made him uneasy, he could not rest
in this state; he was out of temper whenever the Curate's name was
spoken, and accused Ellen of bothering about him as much as Harold did
about Paul Blackthorn; and if he came to see him, he made himself sullen,
and would not talk, sometimes seeming oppressed and tired, and unable to
bear any one's presence, sometimes leaving Ellen to do all the answering,
dreading nothing so much as being left alone with the clergyman. Mr.
Cope had offered to read prayers with him, and he could not refuse; but
he was more apt to be thinking that it was tiresome, than trying to enter
into what, poor foolish boy, would have been his best comfort.

To say he was cross when Mr. Cope was there, would be saying much too
little; there was scarcely any time when he was not cross; he was hardly
civil even to Miss Jane, so that she began to think it was unpleasant to
him to have her there; and if she were a week without calling, he
grumbled hard thoughts about fine people; he was fretful and impatient
with the doctor; and as to those of whom he had no fears, he would have
been quite intolerable, had they loved him less, or had less pity on his
suffering.

He never was pleased with anything; teased his mother half the night, and
drove Ellen