Betty Mainwaring was sixteen. Her fresh young face was sweet and silly, charming by the look of modest purity which passed so easily under the tulle cap and veil for the expression of pious devotion; but in truth Betty’s very innocence, and the fact that she had passed her whole life in an atmosphere of the simplest, strictest religion, had made it impossible for her to concentrate much earnest thought upon this important step in the Christian life. She had read through the devotional works prescribed for her as attentively as she could, and had accepted all the formulas and dogmas of the Church with the unshrinking faith of the most complete ignorance of their meaning. She had been taught that confirmation is one of the most serious events of life, and she believed it and let the fact rest, while her innocent thoughts wandered to a consideration of the backs of the row of girls in front of her, and to the reflection how strange it seemed to be confirmed with one’s own governess. For the girl beside her, with the passionate dark eyes and set, serious face, only eighteen herself, and already carrying on her young shoulders the responsibility of directing the minds of girls of her own age, was Miss Lane, who taught “advanced” English, French, German, Italian, music, and singing to the two grown-up Misses Mainwaring, and the earlier stages of the same to their two younger sisters and their seven-year-old brother. To her life was a serious hard-working affair enough, and her tardy confirmation an event of quite desperate importance, involving much doubt and anxious self-examining. She had even thought of asking the vicar, her pupils’ father, for a private interview, of laying bare the bewildered state of her mind, and of asking him whether he thought her fit for confirmation. The papers on the subject which he had given her to read had proved but dry bones to the eager, earnest girl; but she had a strong conviction that confession would procure little more. The Reverend John Mainwaring’s religion was not of the hysterical, but of the independent sort; and the girl felt that all he could do would be to throw her back on prayer and her own conscience for an answer to her doubts. What was certain was that he would unhesitatingly have pronounced the conscientious little worker, striving hard to live up to an ideal standard of excellence in her dull profession, as fitter for confirmation than almost any member of his flock. So she sat by her pupil’s side, with downcast eyes and mind fixed on the service she was about to hear, curiously conscious at the same time--being keenly alive to outward things and not without a young girl’s vanity--of the interest her pretty, modest appearance was exciting.