That was all?« said Esther, turning rather pale, and biting her lip with
the determination that the tears should not start.
    »Yes, we did not go further into that branch of the subject. I apprehend
there is no warrant for his seeming prognostic, and I should not be without
disquiet if I thought otherwise. For I confess that in your accession to this
great position and property, I contemplate with hopeful satisfaction your
remaining attached to that body of congregational Dissent, which, as I hold,
hath retained most of pure and primitive discipline. Your education and peculiar
history would thus be seen to have coincided with a long train of events in
making this family property a means of honouring and illustrating a purer form
of Christianity than that which hath unhappily obtained the pre-eminence in this
land. I speak, my child, as you know, always in the hope that you will fully
join our communion; and this dear wish of my heart - nay, this urgent prayer -
would seem to be frustrated by your marriage with a man, of whom there is at
least no visible indication that he would unite himself to our body.«
    If Esther had been less agitated, she would hardly have helped smiling at
the picture her father's words suggested of Harold Transome joining the church
in Malthouse Yard. But she was too seriously preoccupied with what Felix had
said, which hurt her in a two-edged fashion that was highly significant. First,
she was angry with him for daring to say positively whom she would marry;
secondly, she was angry at the implication that there was from the first a cool
deliberate design in Harold Transome to marry her. Esther said to herself that
she was quite capable of discerning Harold Transome's disposition, and judging
of his conduct. She felt sure he was generous and open. It did not lower him in
her opinion that since circumstances had brought them together he evidently
admired her - was in love with her - in short, desired to marry her; and she
thought that she discerned the delicacy which hindered him from being more
explicit. There is no point on which young women are more easily piqued than
this of their sufficiency to judge the men who make love to them. And Esther's
generous nature delighted to believe in generosity. All these thoughts were
making a tumult in her mind while her father was suggesting the radiance her lot
might cast on the cause of congregational Dissent. She heard what he said, and
remembered it afterwards, but she made no reply at present, and chose rather to
start up in search of