that
unfortunate name.

"I don't know whether you are aware," Ursula said at last, with some
slowness and reluctance, "that papa's pupil is of a Dissenting family.
He is related, through his mother, to our cousins, the Dorsets." (This
fact Ursula put forth with a little triumph, as refuting triumphantly
any ready conclusion as to the social standing of Dissenters.) "I think
Mr. Northcote came first to the house with Mr. Copperhead. He is a
Dissenter too."

"Why, Ursula," cried Mrs. Hurst, "not the man who attacked Reginald in
the Meeting? It was all in the papers. He made a frightful violent
speech about the College and the sinecure, and what a disgraceful thing
it was that your brother, a young man, could accept it. You don't mean
him?"

Ursula was struck dumb. She looked up at her questioner with her lips
falling apart a little, with a look of mingled consternation and fear.

"Of course it can't be," said the gossip, who was not ill-natured. "You
never read the papers, but your papa does, and so does Reginald. Oh,
you may be sure it is some other Northcote, though I don't know the
name."

"Ursula doesn't like to tell you," said Janey; "but he's the Dissenting
Minister, I know he is. Well! I don't care! He is just as good as
anybody else. I don't go in for your illiberal ways of thinking, as if
no one was worth talking to except in the Church. Mr. Northcote is very
nice. I don't mind what you say. Do you mean to tell me that all those
curates and people who used to plague our lives out were nicer? Mr.
Saunders, for instance; he is a real good Churchman, I have always heard
people say--"

"Hold your tongue, Janey; you don't know anything about it," said Mrs.
Hurst, whom this wonderful disclosure elevated into authority. "A
Dissenting Minister! Ah, me! what a thing it is for you poor girls to
have no mother. I did not think your papa would have had so little
consideration as to expose you to society like that. But men are so
thoughtless."

"I don't know what right you have to speak of exposing us to society
like that," cried Ursula, quivering all over with sudden excitement.

She felt as if some one had dug a knife into her, and turned it round in
the wound.

"Men have so little consideration," repeated Mrs. Hurst, "especially
when a girl is concerned. Though how your papa could have received a man
who made such an assault upon him--even if he had passed over the attack
upon Reginald, he was attacked himsel