mprovements in his cottage property had led to an outlay for which he
well knew he could receive no adequate interest, and, as he had tramped
over the sodden land this morning, he had been occupied with the
anxious consideration how best to make both ends meet.

The longer he lived at Rudham the less he liked it. He was deprived of
the society of men of his own way of thinking; and with the rector, who
in theory he cordially respected and liked, he found himself nearly
always in tacit opposition. Paul's friendship with Kitty was the only
connecting link between him and the rector; otherwise they would have
drifted hopelessly apart before now. Then, on this particular morning,
as he returned home he heard a rumour that May Webster was going to be
married to a baronet who had haunted the Court pretty frequently during
the last few months; and the hint had filled Paul with unreasoning
irritation. Not that it mattered to him whom she married, he assured
himself; but the Court had become the one bright spot to him in all the
place.

Paul, having promised his friendship, had given it unstintingly, and
had been proud to discover that in many of the subjects which
interested him the most deeply, he had found May Webster a ready pupil;
and when she differed from him she held her own with such merry
defiance, that it gave her an added charm in his eyes. And now this
mindless, fox-hunting squire was to carry her off, and life at Rudham
would sink into one dead level of dulness. Thus it happened that he
came home in a captious mood.

"What's the excitement, Sally? A wedding, I suppose, for the bells are
making row enough to wake the dead."

"No, it's the Bishop," said Sally, flushing a little. "There is a
Confirmation here to-day."

Paul's eyes travelled from Sally's crimsoning face to the white dress
she wore.

"I can't see why the Bishop is to be welcomed like a bride, and you are
to dress like one of his bridesmaids," he said. "What a singularly
inappropriate garment for this dreary November day."

"I am going to be confirmed, Paul."

A long pause followed. It was the crowning vexation of a tiresome
morning; but Paul did not wish to say anything that he would afterwards
regret.

"It's a decided step, Sally; I wonder if you have thought it over
enough? You will probably wake up from this religious craze to find
yourself bound down to a creed which your reason rejects."

"It is conviction, not a craze," sai