tness that
nothing should ever induce him to read such a godless author, going
about in the mask of a so-called Bishop. But had any of them read
Colenso, except possibly Llewellyn Roberts, who in his Welsh way would
pretend ignorance and then come out with a quotation and refer you to
the exact page? Edwin himself had read very little of Colenso--and that
little only because a customer had ordered the second part of the
"Pentateuch" and he had stolen it for a night. Colenso was not in the
Free Library... What a world! What a debate! Still, he could not help
dwelling with pleasure on Mr Roberts's insistence on the brilliant
quality of his brains. Astute as Mr Roberts was, the man was clearly
in awe of Edwin's brains! Why? To be honest, Edwin had never been
deeply struck by his own brain power. And yet there must be something
in it!

"Of course," he reflected sardonically, "father doesn't show the
faintest interest in the debate. Yet he knew all about it, and that I
had to open it." But he was glad that his father showed no interest in
the debate. Clara had mentioned it in the presence of Maggie, with her
usual ironic intent, and Edwin had quickly shut her up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOUR.

In the afternoon, the sitting-room being made uninhabitable by his
father's goose-ridden dozes, he went out for a walk; the weather was
cold and fine. When he returned his father also had gone out; the two
girls were lolling in the sitting-room. An immense fire, built up by
Darius, was just ripe for the beginning of decay, and the room very
warm. Clara was at the window, Maggie in Darius's chair reading a novel
of Charlotte M Yonge's. On the table, open, was a bound volume of "The
Family Treasury of Sunday Reading," in which Clara had been perusing
"The Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family" with feverish interest.
Edwin had laughed at her ingenuous absorption in the adventures of the
Schonberg-Cotta family, but the fact was that he had found them rather
interesting, in spite of himself, while pretending the contrary. There
was an atmosphere of high obstinate effort and heroical foreign-ness
about the story which stimulated something secret in him that seldom
responded to the provocation of a book; more easily would this secret
something respond to a calm evening or a distant prospect, or the
silence of early morning when by chance he looked out of his window.