a time, ma'am," said Charles; "when my examination is
over, I will take as long walks as I did with Edward Gandy that winter
after I left school."

"Ah, how merry you were then, Charles!" said Mary; "so happy with the
thoughts of Oxford before you!"

"Ah, my dear," said Mrs. Reding, "you'll then walk too much, as you now
walk too little. My good boy, you are so earnest about everything."

"It's a shame to find fault with him for being diligent," said Mary:
"you like him to read for honours, I know, mamma; but if he is to get
them he must read a great deal."

"True, my love," answered Mrs. Reding; "Charles is a dear good fellow, I
know. How glad we all shall be to have him ordained, and settled in a
curacy!"

Charles sighed. "Come, Mary," he said, "give us some music, now the urn
has gone away. Play me that beautiful air of Beethoven, the one I call
'The Voice of the Dead.'"

"Oh, Charles, you do give such melancholy names to things!" cried Mary.

"The other day," said Eliza, "we had a most beautiful scent wafted
across the road as we were walking, and he called it 'the Ghost of the
Past;' and he says that the sound of the Eolian harp is 'remorseful.'"

"Now, you'd think all that very pretty," said Charles, "if you saw it in
a book of poems; but you call it melancholy when I say it."

"Oh, yes," said Caroline, "because poets never mean what they say, and
would not be poetical unless they were melancholy."

"Well," said Mary, "I play to you, Charles, on this one condition, that
you let me give you some morning a serious lecture on that melancholy of
yours, which, I assure you is growing on you."

CHAPTER XII.

Charles's perplexities rapidly took a definite form on his coming into
Devonshire. The very fact of his being at home, and not at Oxford where
he ought to have been, brought them before his mind; and the near
prospect of his examination and degree justified the consideration of
them. No addition indeed was made to their substance, as already
described; but they were no longer vague and indistinct, but thoroughly
apprehended by him; nor did he make up his mind that they were
insurmountable, but he saw clearly what it was that had to be
surmounted. The particular form of argument into which they happened to
fall was determined by the circumstances in which he found himself at
the time, and was this, viz. how he could subscribe the Articles _ex
animo_, without faith, more or less, in his Church as