Harry did not dream of making the slightest apology for those extraordinary occupations. He was as free from self-consciousness now as ever. He mentioned the schools and the festival as naturally and unaffectedly as if he had been referring to a cricket-match and the dinner which followed. That struck Oliver as the most hopeful symptom in the case, and he was as devoutly glad as the Weatherleys could have wished. But Oliver’s gladness received a sudden check when he found Harry writing humbly enough, to be sure, of his unfitness for reading for orders, as Mr. Weatherley had just been suggesting he might do. ‘Good heavens, I should think not!’ assented Oliver in a great heat. ‘I am glad Harry retains one iota of common sense, if Weatherley is so far out of his mind. Now, even supposing Harry has outlived his lamentable propensity—supposing he were to pass muster, I should have to interfere and speak to the bishop.’ But poor Harry was not really thinking of anything so far beyond him. He was only modestly preluding the statement that he had been with Mr. Weatherley when he was delivering some of his cottage addresses, and Harry had been moved and helped to say a word of warning from his own experience. Was Harry in the way of being taught to go about and speak at such meetings? Had he, too, turned social reformer and preacher—in the last particular, as Oliver was free to admit, shrugging his shoulders, far outstripping his, Oliver’s, performances? Would Harry’s inveterate fancy for joining in whatever was going on, his incorrigible good-fellowship, thenceforth, or even for a time, take the shape of lay aid in priestly ministrations, pointing Mr. Weatherley’s morals by a word in season from a sinner who was a standing commentary on the vicar’s text—at once a warning and an example, a young man who was ready to proclaim himself an evildoer formerly, one who had known both the temptation and the penalty, but had escaped with the skin of his teeth? Would Harry, if he continued in well-doing, go on exposing his shortcomings, steeling himself in the exposure, till he should come to Fan’s wrongs? Would he regard it as an act of expiation, and an offering for the good of his fellow-men, to speak out thus, and when his little daughter was old enough to listen to his words and understand them, would he still tell his piteous tale, and humble himself in her hearing—it might be in the hearing of some other evangelist’s daughter or sister, who might have replaced Fan and become Harry’s second wife, and the mother of his children? Oliver writhed at the mere notion. He recalled Fan’s strong, proud reserve in the middle of her ardour, her delicate reticence, her unconquerable shrinking from common speculation and coarse comment. Were the sacred secrets of her death-bed to be bruited about and made food for vulgar curiosity by this new kind of weak excess in the man who had inflicted the agony?