her nothing of the graver doubts which
were wont to trouble him.
    But as her children grew up, Mrs. Warricombe's mind and temper were
insensibly modified by influences which operated through her maternal
affections, influences no doubt aided by the progressive spirit of the time. The
three boys - Buckland, Maurice, and Louis - were distinctly of a new generation.
It needed some ingenuity to discover their points of kindred with paternal and
maternal grandparents; nor even with father and mother had they much in common
which observation could readily detect. Sidwell, up to at least her fifteenth
year, seemed to present far less change of type. In her Mrs. Warricombe
recognised a daughter, and not without solace. But Fanny again was a
problematical nature, almost from the cradle. Latest born, she appeared to
revive many characteristics of the youthful Buckland, so far as a girl could
resemble her brother. It was a strange brood to cluster around Mrs. Warricombe.
For many years the mother was kept in alternation between hopes and fears, pride
and disapproval, the old hereditary habits of mind, and a new order of ideas
which could only be admitted with the utmost slowness. Buckland's Radicalism
deeply offended her; she marvelled how such depravity could display itself in a
child of hers. Yet in the end her ancestral prejudices so far yielded as to
allow of her smiling at sentiments which she once heard with horror. Maurice,
whom she loved more tenderly, all but taught her to see the cogency of a
syllogism - amiably set forth. And Louis, with his indolent good-nature, laughed
her into a tolerance of many things which had moved her indignation. But it was
to Sidwell that in the end she owed most. Beneath the surface of ordinary and
rather backward girlhood, which discouraged her father's hopes, Sidwell was
quietly developing a personality distinguished by the refinement of its ethical
motives. Her orthodoxy seemed as unimpeachable as Mrs. Warricombe could desire,
yet as she grew into womanhood, a curiosity, which in no way disturbed the tenor
of her quietly contented life, led her to examine various forms of religion,
ancient and modern, and even systems of philosophy which professed to establish
a moral code, independent of supernatural faith. She was not of studious
disposition - that is to say, she had never cared as a schoolgirl to do more
mental work than was required of her, and even now it was seldom that she read
for more than an hour or two in the day. Her habit was to dip into books, and
meditate long on the first points which arrested