But the vexation she had felt at Jack for refusing to be governed by her in the matter of a confessor was nothing to the anger which she felt against him at present. Jack presuming to read and decide for himself; pretending to have a higher standard than her own, and above all attempting to instruct her; Jack telling her that all her penances, her enforced works of charity, her bed of boards and ashes, her fasts and vigils, were all worthless and worse than worthless, and that he—he, a schoolboy, and three years younger than herself—had discovered a better and safer way! Anne had always found it hard to have any charity or toleration for those who differed from her, but this was the worst of all. But this was not all. There was a deeper cause for her disquiet than wounded self-love. Anne had told the truth when she said that she had found it hard to forget the words she had heard from Agnes Harland. They had indeed rung in her ears for days, and a voice in her heart constantly made answer to them, "These things are true! They are no delusion—no modern invention. They are true, and if so all my belief hitherto has been false, all my sanctity wherein I have trusted and for which I have received honor of men is built on a false foundation." For days and weeks these and such like thoughts tormented her. She confessed them to Father Barnaby; she performed with punctilious accuracy the penances he laid upon her; she tried with all her might to overcome her affection for poor Agnes, and to believe what Father Barnaby told her, that her betrayal of her friend's confidence to him had been a virtue and not a piece of base treachery. She did in some measure quiet her conscience and mind, and recover her self-complacency, by such means; but there yet lingered in the depths of her heart, an uneasy feeling that all was not right with her; that Agnes might after all have been a martyr for truth instead of a stubborn heretic. She had not intended to tell Father Barnaby of what Jack had said about wanting to read the Bible; but, as Thomas Sprat had once said, she was as wax in the hands of her confessor. The clergy had begun to be exceedingly jealous on the subject of the Scriptures, already spreading among the common people, and to watch on all sides for the least indication of heretical opinions. Anne came away from her confession trying to think that she had done her duty to her brother, though she well knew to what her confession might lead. She felt that she had betrayed her brother's confidence, and it was this which made her so shy of him when he came home from Holford. Still, she said to herself she had done her duty, she had disregarded the ties of the flesh, as she had been told she was bound to do; and if she was made wretched thereby, why, there was only so much the more merit in the action, and that was some comfort.