might as well have held
my tongue. I have simply pained her without relieving myself.
By-the-bye, she has gone off believing about twice as much as the fact.
I was going to set her right when Carry came in. My only difficulty is
about taking orders; and she thinks I am going to be a Roman Catholic.
How absurd! but women will run on so; give an inch, and they take an
ell. I know nothing of the Roman Catholics. The simple question is,
whether I should go to the Bar or the Church. I declare, I think I have
made vastly too much of it myself. I ought to have begun this way with
her,--I ought to have said, 'D'you know, I have serious thoughts of
reading law?' I've made a hash of it."

Poor Mary, on the other hand, was in a confusion of thought and feeling
as painful as it was new to her; though for a time household matters and
necessary duties towards her younger sisters occupied her mind in a
different direction. She had been indeed taken at her word; little had
she expected what would come on her when she engaged to "take the
fretting, while he took the reading." She had known what grief was, not
so long ago; but not till now had she known anxiety. Charles's state of
mind was a matter of simple astonishment to her. At first it quite
frightened and shocked her; it was as if Charles had lost his identity,
and had turned out some one else. It was like a great breach of trust.
She had seen there was a good deal in the newspapers about the "Oxford
party" and their doings; and at different places, where she had been on
visits, she had heard of churches being done up in the new fashion, and
clergymen being accused, in consequence, of Popery--a charge which she
had laughed at. But now it was actually brought home to her door that
there was something in it. Yet it was to her incomprehensible, and she
hardly knew where she was. And that, of all persons in the world, her
brother, her own Charles, with whom she had been one heart and soul all
their lives--one so cheerful, so religious, so good, so sensible, so
cautious,--that he should be the first specimen that crossed her path of
the new opinions,--it bewildered her.

And where _had_ he got his notions?--Notions! she could not call them
notions; he had nothing to say for himself. It was an infatuation; he,
so clever, so sharp-sighted, could say nothing better in defence of
himself than that Mrs. Bishop of Monmouth was too pretty, and that old
Dr. Stock sat upon a cushion. Oh, sad,