xploits and deceptions repugnant to a
well-conditioned lad. He saw Miss Charlecote's perfect confidence abused
and trifled with, and the more he grew in a sense of honour, the more he
disliked Owen Sandbrook.

At the University, where Robert's career had been respectable and
commonplace, Owen was at once a man of mark. Mental and physical powers
alike rendered him foremost among his compeers; he could compete with the
fast, and surpass the slow on their own ground; and his talents, ready
celerity, good-humoured audacity, and quick resource, had always borne
him through with the authorities, though there was scarcely an excess or
irregularity in which he was not a partaker; and stories of Sandbrook's
daring were always circulating among the undergraduates. But though
Robert could have scared Phoebe with many a history of lawless pranks,
yet these were not his chief cause for dreading Owen's intimacy with her.
It was that he was one of the youths on whom the spirit of the day had
most influence, one of the most adventurous thinkers and boldest talkers:
wild in habits, not merely from ebullition of spirits, but from want of
faith in the restraining power.

All this Robert briefly expressed in the words, 'Phoebe, it is not that
his habits are irregular and unsteady; many are so whose hearts are
sound. But he is not sound--his opinions are loose, and he only respects
and patronizes Divine Truth as what has approved itself to so many good,
great, and beloved human creatures. It is not denial--it is patronage.
It is the commonsense heresy--'

'I thought we all ought to learn common sense.'

'Yes, in things human, but in things Divine it is the subtle English form
of rationalism. This is no time to explain, Phoebe; but human sense and
intellect are made the test, and what surpasses them is only admired as
long as its stringent rules do not fetter the practice.'

'I am sorry you told me,' said Phoebe, thoughtfully, 'for I always liked
him; he is so kind to me.'

Had not Robert been full of his own troubles he would have been
reassured, but he only gave a contemptuous groan.

'Does Lucy know this?' she asked.

'She told me herself what I well knew before. She does not reflect
enough to take it seriously, and contrives to lay the blame upon the
narrowness of Miss Charlecote's training.'

'Oh, Robin! When all our best knowledge came from the Holt!'

'She says, perhaps not unjustly, that Miss Charlecote overdid th