were one of those happy people, it is no more
consistent in you to go to church than it would be in me to set up
Rashe's globules.'

'No, don't tell me so, Lucy. There lie all my best associations. I
venerate what the great, the good, the beloved receive as their blessing
and inspiration. Sometimes I can assimilate myself, and catch an echo of
what was happiness when I was a child at Honor's knee.'

The tears had welled into his eyes again, and he hurried away. Lucilla
had faith (or rather acquiescence) without feeling. Feeling without
faith was a mystery to her. How much Owen believed or disbelieved she
knew not, probably he could not himself have told. It was more
uncertainty than denial, rather dislike to technical dogma than positive
unbelief; and yet, with his predilections all on the side of faith, she
could not, womanlike, understand why they did not bring his reason with
them. After all, she decided, in her off-hand fashion, that there was
quite enough that was distressing and perplexing without concerning
herself about them!

Style, as Owen called it, was more attended to than formerly at St.
Wulstan's, but was not in perfection. Robert, whose ear was not his
strong point, did not shine in intoning, and the other curate preached.
The impression seemed only to have weakened that of the morning, for
Owen's remarks on coming out were on the English habit of having overmuch
of everything, and on the superior sense of foreigners in holiday-making,
instead of making a conscience of stultifying themselves with double and
triple church-going.

Cilla agreed in part, but owned that she was glad to have done with
Continental Sundays that had left her feeling good for nothing all the
week, just as she had felt when once, as a child, to spite Honor, she had
come down without saying her prayers.

'The burthen bound on her conscience by English prejudice,' said her
brother, adding 'that this was the one oppressive edict of popular
theology. It was mere self-defence to say that the dulness was
Puritanical, since the best Anglican had a cut-and-dried pattern for all
others.'

'But surely as a fact, Sunday observance is the great safeguard. All
goes to the winds when that is given up.'

'The greater error to have rendered it grievous.'

Lucilla had no reply. She had not learnt the joy of the week's
Easter-day. It had an habitual awe for her, not sacred delight; and she
could not see that because it was one