Then came the death of the old confessor, who loved ease and comfort himself and had no disposition to deny it to other people, and the advent of Father Barnaby, who never spared himself, nor anybody else. The old nuns grumbled, and the prioress now and then rebelled, and successfully too, for she was a woman of spirit and ability and had no notion of being made a cipher in her own house; but the younger sisters, with only few exceptions, were enthusiastic partisans of Father Barnaby, and none more so than Anne. No service was too long for her, no penance too severe. She was bent upon becoming a saint on Father Barnaby's pattern, and the confessor encouraged her in the idea. All this helped to keep alive in her mind the idea of her own superiority. She was a good deal shaken indeed by the incident of her friend's disgrace and disappearance, and for a little time she was thoroughly humbled in her own eyes; but the penances she enjoined upon herself with a view of expiating her own offence and that of her friend, seemed to build her up once more in her own self-esteem. These penances she continued, as we have seen, in her father's house when she was sent home to remain for a year before taking the veil. Her father with his bustling business habits, his love of moderate good cheer, and his perhaps too outspoken contempt and dislike for the monks and the religious houses generally, was a mere worldly-minded scoffer in her eyes; Cousin Cicely, whose whole life had been one long self-abnegation, but who could hardly read, and write not at all, was a mere housewife fit for nothing but her kitchen and her store-rooms; and Jack was but an insignificant chit of a boy, to be patronized and brought into the right way by his sister's influence. Jack was to become a priest, and perhaps be a bishop, while she was abbess of some great religious house (for already her ambitions soared far beyond the little sisterhood at Nunwood), and he was to owe all to her influence and direction. It was a great shock to this fine castle in the air, when Jack utterly refused to leave Sir William Leavett's church and teachings for the spiritual guide she had selected for him. Jack declared that Sir William was a good man and kind to him; that he loved him dearly, and would not leave him for any of the fathers at the convent; and his father sustained him in his refusal, adding that in his opinion, Anne would do well to consult Sir William herself. Anne had performed many "humbling" penances to perfect her in humility, but, strange to say, when it came to a real contradiction, these penances did not seem to help her in the least. She was as angry at Jack for presuming to have an opinion of his own, as if she had never kissed the feet of the sisters or knelt on the floor while they were at dinner.