“I care a great deal,” he said, very low, and sighed. And Kate’s heart was sore, and she was angry, and wounded, and for almost the first time in her life felt that she had a little pride in her nature. Did the other despise her to whom she had given her heart? Did he think she was not worthy even of courtesy? though other people were so far from thinking so. Kate’s impatient heart began to beat high with anger and with pain. CHAPTER XXIV. The first great apparent change in a life is not always its real beginning. It may be but the beginning of the beginning, as it were, the first grand crash of the ice, the opening of the fountain. There is more noise and more demonstration than when the full tide of waters begins to swell into the broader channel, but it is not the great crisis which it has the look of being. It is the commencement of a process of which it is impossible to predict the end. This had been emphatically the case with John Mitford when he was suddenly swept out of his father’s house and out of all the traditions of his youth. It seemed to him and to everybody that his life had then taken its individual shape. When he returned to Fanshawe Regis, he went about with new eyes, curiously observing everything which before he had accepted without observation. Was it that he felt the new better? Was it that he hankered after the old? These were questions which he could not answer. The only thing he was quite sure of in respect to himself was that he was uncertain about everything, and that life was no longer sweet enough to make up for the darkness and troubles in it. With this feeling in his mind he listened to his father’s sermons, seeing everything in a different light, and went with his mother on her parish work, carrying her basket, gazing wistfully in at the cottage windows, wondering what was the good of it all. He had never questioned for a moment the good of at least his mother’s ministrations until now. When she came smiling out of one of the cottages it cast a gloom upon her to find her boy, who had always been full of faith in her at least, standing unresponsive, waiting for her outside. She looked him in the eyes with her tender smile, and said, “Well, John?” as she gave back the little basket into his hand. “Well,” he said, with a sigh, “my good little mother! do you think it is worth all the trouble you are taking, and all the trouble you have taken since ever I remember?--that is what I want to know.” “Yes, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, “that and a great deal more. Oh, John, if I could feel that but one, only one, was brought back to God by any means!” “I think they are all very much the same as they used to be,” said John. “I recollect when I was a small boy, there was always something to be set right _there_.”