, and
I don't know how I could ever, ever live without Gerald; but to feel
as if you were an improper person, and all the children's prospects in
life!--Oh, Frank!" cried the weeping Louisa, burying her face in her
handkerchief, "I think I shall go distracted, and my heart will
break."

To all this strange and unexpected revelation the startled Curate
listened like a man in a dream. Possibly his sister-in-law's
representation of this danger, as seen entirely from her own point of
view, had a more alarming effect upon him that any other statement of
the case. He could have gone into Gerald's difficulties with so much
sympathy and fellow-feeling that the shock would have been trifling in
comparison; and between Rome and the highest level of Anglicanism
there was no such difference as to frighten the accustomed mind of the
Curate of St Roque's. But, seen from Louisa's side, matters appeared
very different: here the foundations of the earth were shaking, and
life itself going to pieces; even the absurdity of her distress made
the whole business more real; and the poor little woman, whose trouble
was that she herself would neither be a wife nor a widow, had enough
of truth on her side to unfold a miserable picture to the eyes of the
anxious spectator. He did not know what answer to make her; and
perhaps it was a greater consolation to poor Louisa to be permitted to
run on--

"And you know it never needed to have come to this if Gerald had been
like other people," she said, drying her tears, and with a tone of
remonstrance. "Of course it is a family living, and it is not likely
his own father would have made any disturbance; and there is no other
family in the parish but the Skipwiths, and they are great friends,
and never would have said a word. He might have preached in six
surplices if he had liked," cried poor Louisa--"who would have minded?
And as for confession, and all that, I don't believe there is anybody
in the world who had done any wrong that could have helped confessing
to Gerald; he is so good--oh, Frank, you know he is so good!" said the
exasperated little wife, overcome with fondness and admiration and
impatience, "and there is nobody in the parish that I ever heard of
that does not worship him; but when I tell him so, he never pays the
least attention. And then Edward Plumstead and he go on talking about
subscription, and signing articles, and nonsense, till they make my
head swim. Nobody, I am sure, wants