Mr. Owen came to dinner next day, according to my invitation. He was a young man, younger than Maurice, and a hundred times more agreeable. He was curate of St. Peter’s, in Simonborough, where a curate among the multitude of divines congregated about the cathedral, was as hard to find or make any note of as the famous needle in the bundle of hay. And it is very probable that he was not a brilliant preacher, or noted for any gift in particular; but I liked the honest, manful young fellow, who was not ashamed either to do his work or to talk of it when occasion called--nor afraid to marry upon his minute income, nor to tell me with a passing blush and a happy laugh, which became him, what a famous little housekeeper his wife was, and what fun they had over her economics. Maurice heard and smiled--calm, ineffable, superior--and wished he could only submit his unhappily more enlightened mind to a simple faith like Owen’s. And Owen, on his part, was respectful of the dainty disbeliever, and took off his hat to that scepticism, born of idleness and an unoccupied mind, for which I, in my secret heart, for sheer impatience and disgust, could have whipped the Fellow of Exeter. Mr. Owen was as respectful of it as if that pensive negation had been something actual and of solemn importance. He shook his head and talked to me mysteriously of poor Harley. Maurice had rather distinguished himself at college before he sank into his fellowship. His old companions who were of the same standing were a little proud of his scholarly attainments. “He could be anything if he chose,” they said to themselves; and because Maurice did not choose, his capabilities looked all the grander. Owen was quite a partisan of Harley. “What a pity it was!” the honest fellow said, “with such a mind, if he could but get right views”---- At which juncture I struck the excellent young man dumb and breathless by uttering aloud a fervent desire and prayer that by some happy chance Maurice should fall in love. Mr. Owen looked at me for a moment thunderstruck, the words of his own former sensible sentence hanging half-formed about his lips; then, when he had recovered himself a little, he smiled and said, “You have so much confidence in a female preacher? No doubt they are irresistible--but not in matters of doctrine, perhaps.” “No such thing,” said I, “I have no confidence in female preachers or religious courtship; but apart from the intense satisfaction which I own I should have in seeing Maurice make, as people say, a fool of himself, that is the only means I see of bringing him back to life.” “To life!” said my new acquaintance, with a lively look of interrogation.