engulfed them; but even when
enclosed in the polished square pew, they could not resign hope at every
tread on the matted floor, and finally subsided into a trust that the
truants might after service emerge from a seat near the door. There were
only too many to choose from.

That hope baffled, Honora still manufactured excuses which Phoebe
greedily seized and offered to her brother, but she read his rejection of
them in his face, and to her conviction that it was all accident, he
answered, as she took his arm, 'A small accident would suffice for
Sandbrook.'

'You don't think he is hindering his sister!'

'I can't tell. I only know that he is one of the many stumbling-blocks
in her way. He can do no good to any one with whom he associates
intimately. I hate to see him reading poetry with you.'

'Why did you never tell me so?' asked the startled Phoebe.

'You are so much taken up with him that I can never get at you, when I am
not devoured by that office.'

'I am sure I did not know it,' humbly answered Phoebe. 'He is very kind
and amusing, and Miss Charlecote is so fond of him that, of course, we
must be together; but I never meant to neglect you, Robin, dear.'

'No, no, nonsense, it is no paltry jealousy; only now I can speak to you,
I must,' said Robert, who had been in vain craving for this opportunity
of getting his sister alone, ever since the alarm excited by Lucilla's
words.

'What is this harm, Robin?'

'Say not a word of it. Miss Charlecote's heart must not be broken before
its time, and at any rate it shall not come through me.'

'What, Robert?'

'The knowledge of what he is. Don't say it is prejudice. I know I never
liked him, but you shall hear why. You ought now--'

Robert's mind had often of late glanced back to the childish days when,
with their present opinions reversed, he thought Owen a muff, and Owen
thought him a reprobate. To his own blunt and reserved nature, the
expressions, so charming to poor Miss Charlecote, had been painfully
distasteful. Sentiment, profession, obtrusive reverence, and
fault-finding scruples had revolted him, even when he thought it a proof
of his own irreligion to be provoked. Afterwards, when both were
schoolboys, Robert had yearly increased in conscientiousness under good
discipline and training, but, in their holiday meetings, had found Owen's
standard receding as his own advanced, and heard the once-deficient manly
spirit asserted by boasts of e