her thoughts. Of continuous
application she seemed incapable. She could read French, but did not attempt to
pursue the other languages of which her teachers had given her a smattering. It
pleased her best when she could learn from conversation. In this way she
obtained some insight into her father's favourite sciences, occasionally making
suggestions or inquiries which revealed a subtle if not an acute intelligence.
    Little by little Mrs. Warricombe found herself changing places with the
daughter whom she had regarded as wholly subject to her direction. Sidwell began
to exercise an indeterminate control, the proofs of which were at length
manifest in details of her mother's speech and demeanour. An exquisite social
tact, an unfailing sincerity of moral judgment, a gentle force which operated as
insensibly as the qualities of pure air: these were the points of character to
which Mrs. Warricombe owed the humanisation observable when one compared her in
1885 with what she was, say, in 1874, when the sight of Professor Walsh moved
her to acrimony, and when she conceived a pique against Professor Gale because
the letter P has alphabetical precedence of W. Her limitations were of course
the same as ever, and from her sons she had only learnt to be ashamed of
announcing them too vehemently. Sidwell it was who had led her to that degree of
genuine humility, which is not satisfied with hiding a fault but strives to
amend it.
    Martin Warricombe himself was not unaffected by the growth about him of
young men and maidens who looked upon the world with new eyes, whose world,
indeed, was another than that in which he had spent the better part of his life.
In his case contact with the young generation tended to unsettlement, to a
troublesome persistency of speculations which he would have preferred to dismiss
altogether. At the time of his marriage, and for some years after, he was
content to make a broad distinction between those intellectual pursuits which
afforded him rather a liberal amusement than the pleasures of earnest study and
the questions of metaphysical faith which concerned his heart and conscience.
His native prejudices were almost as strong, and much the same, as those of his
wife; but with the vagueness of emotional logic natural to his constitution, he
satisfied himself that, by conceding a few inessential points, he left himself
at liberty to follow the scientific movements of the day without damage to his
religious convictions. The tolerant smile so frequently on his countenance was
directed as often in the one quarter as in the other. Now it signified a gentle
reproof of those men of science who, like Professor Walsh, went too far, whose
zeal for