s simply brutal of him! If
any one had told her that he would do such a thing she would not have
believed them. He had said nothing of the sort to her before, though
they had known each other so long; but, now that she was ill and
helpless and unable to get away from him, he had seen fit to come and
lecture her. Well, he was a parson! She might have known that sooner or
later the horrid, tyrannical, priestly side of him would show! And yet
she had liked him so much, trusted him so much! It was indescribably
bitter to think that he was no longer the hero she had thought him to
be. That, after all, he was not a grand, noble, self-denying man, but a
fault-finding priest!

She spent the rest of the afternoon in alternate wrath and grief. In the
evening Aunt Jean read her a somewhat dry book which required all her
attention, and, consequently, her anger cooled for want of thoughts to
stimulate it. Her father did not come in till late; but, as he carried
her upstairs to bed, she told him of Charles Osmond's interview.

"I told him you like a little opposition," was his reply.

"I don't know about opposition, but I didn't like him, he showed his
priestly side."

"I am sorry," replied Raeburn. "For my part I genuinely like the man;
he seems to me a grand fellow, and I should have said not in the
least spoiled by his Christianity, for he is neither exclusive, nor
narrow-minded, nor opposed to progress. Infatuated on one point, of
course, but a thorough man in spite of it."

Left once more alone in her little attic room, Erica began to think
over things more quietly. So her father had told him that she liked
opposition, and he had doled out to her a rebuke which was absolutely
unanswerable! But why unanswerable? She had been too angry to reply at
the time. It was one of the few maxims her father had given her, "When
you are angry be very slow to speak." But she might write an answer, a
nice, cold, cutting answer, respectful, of course, but very frigid. She
would clearly demonstrate to him that she was perfectly fair, and that
he, her accuser, was unfair.

And then quite quietly, she began to turn over the accusations in
her mind. Quoting the words of Christ without regard to the context,
twisting their meaning. Neglecting real study of Christ's character and
life. Seeing all through a veil of prejudice.

She would begin, like her father, with a definition of terms. What
did he mean by study? What did she mean by study? We