He had been going in the opposite direction, but, though he was not at all reconciled to her, he was not willing either to part with Agnes. He turned, only half consciously, only half willingly, yet by an irresistible compulsion. He tried indifferent conversation, and so did she; but, in spite of himself, Lionel Rivers was a truer man with Agnes Atheling than he was with any other person in the world. He who had never cared for sympathy from any one, somehow or other felt a necessity for hers, and had a certain imperious disappointment and impatience when it was withheld from him, which was entirely unreasonable, and not to be accounted for. He broke off abruptly from the talk about nothing, to speak of some intended movements of his own. “I am going to town,” said Mr Rivers. “I am somewhat unsettled at present in my intentions; after that, probably, I may spend some time abroad.” “All because he is the heir!” thought Agnes to herself; and again she coloured with distress and vexation. It was impossible to keep something of this from her tone; when she spoke, it was in a voice subdued a little out of its usual tenor; but all that she asked was a casual question, meaning nothing--“If Mr Mead would have the duty while the Rector was away?” “Yes,” said the Rector; “he is very much better fitted for it than I am. Here I have been cramping my wings these three years. Fathers and mothers are bitterly to blame; they bind a man to what his soul loathes, because it is his best method of earning some paltry pittance--so much a-year!” After this exclamation the young clergyman made a pause, and so did his diffident and uneasy auditor, who “did not like” either to ask his meaning, or to make any comment upon it. After a few minutes he resumed again-- “I suppose it must constantly be so where we dare to think for ourselves,” he said, in a tone of self-conversation. “A man who thinks _must_ come to conclusions different from those which are taught to him--different, perhaps, from all that has been concluded truest in the ages that are past. What shall we say? Woe be to me if I do not follow out my reasoning, to whatever length it may lead!” “When Paul says, Woe be to him, it is, if he does not preach the Gospel,” said Agnes. Mr Rivers smiled. “Be glad of your own happy exemption,” he said, turning to her, with the air of a man who knows by heart all the old arguments--all the feminine family arguments against scepticism and dangerous speculations. “I will leave you in possession of your beautiful Gospel--your pure faith. I shall not attempt to disturb your mind--do not fear.”