se all his creditors would make a rush upon him, and all his
affairs would be thrown open to the remorseless public gaze, if the
bill, which had been so often renewed, had to be dishonoured at last.
Mr. May had a conscience, though he was not careful of his money, and
the fear of ruin to Cotsdean was a very terrible and real oppression to
him. The recollection was upon him like a vulture in classic story,
tearing and gnawing, as he sat there and smiled over the cup of tea
Ursula gave him, feeling amused all the same at Phoebe's talk. He could
scarcely have told why he had permitted his daughter to pursue her
acquaintance with Tozer's granddaughter. Partly it was because of
Clarence Copperhead; out of curiosity, as, being about to be brought in
contact with some South Sea Islander or Fijian, one would naturally wish
to see another who was thrown in one's way by accident, and thus prepare
one's self for the permanent acquaintance. And she amused him. Her
cleverness, her ease, her conversational powers, her woman of the world
aspect, did not so much impress him, perhaps, as they did others; but
the complacency and innocent confidence of youth that were in her, and
her own enjoyment of the situation, notwithstanding the mortifications
incurred--all this amused Mr. May. He listened to her talk, sometimes
feeling himself almost unable to bear it, for the misery of those words,
which kept themselves ringing in a dismal chorus in his own mind, and
yet deriving a kind of amusement and distraction from it all the same.

"One of your friends was very hard upon my son--and myself--at your
Meeting the other night, Miss Beecham."

"He was very injudicious," said Phoebe, shaking her head. "Indeed I did
not approve. Personalities never advance any cause. I said so to him.
Don't you think the Church has herself to blame for those political
Dissenters, Mr. May? You sneer at us, and look down upon us--"

"I? I don't sneer at anybody."

"I don't mean you individually; but Churchmen do. They treat us as if
we were some strange kind of creatures, from the heart of Africa
perhaps. They don't think we are just like themselves: as well educated;
meaning as well; with as much right to our own ideas."

Mr. May could scarcely restrain a laugh. "Just like themselves." The
idea of a Dissenter setting up to be as well educated, and as capable of
forming an opinion, as a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a
beneficed clergyman, was too novel