“The son is culpable.  Mad people should be shut up where they can do no mischief.”  About half the ladies present joined in this comment.

Mrs. Rexford looked round uneasily to see that her young daughter Winifred had not joined the party.  Indiscreet usually, she was wonderfully tender in these days of Winifred.

“I am not sure that if he had been my father I would have shut him up.”  Trenholme spoke and sighed.

“If he had been my father,” Sophia cried vehemently, “I would have gone with him from village to village and door to door; I would rather have begged my bread than kept him from preaching.  I would have told the people he was a little mad, but not much, and saner than any of them.”

There was enough sympathy with Sophia’s vivacity among her friends to make it easy to express herself naturally.

“What is one false opinion more or less?” she cried.  “Do any of us imagine that our opinions are just those held in heaven?  This old man had all his treasure in heaven, and that is, after all, the best security that heart or mind will not go far astray.”

The youngest Miss Brown was sitting on the fur rugs, not very far from Trenholme.  She looked up at him, pretty herself in the prettiness of genuine admiration.

“It is such a pity that Miss Rexford is sitting just out of your sight.  You would be lenient to the heresy if you could see how becoming it is to the heretic.”

But Trenholme was not seen to look round.  He was found to be saying that the son of the late preacher evidently held his father in reverence; it seemed that the old man had in his youth been a disciple and preacher under Miller, the founder of the Adventist sect; it was natural that, as his faculties failed, his mind should revert to the excitements of the former time.

Mrs. Bennett had already launched forth an answer to Sophia’s enthusiasm.  She continued, in spite of Trenholme’s intervening remarks.  “When I was a girl papa always warned us against talking on serious subjects.  He thought we could not understand them.”

“I think it was good advice,” said Sophia with hardihood.

“Oh yes, naturally—­papa being a dean—­”

Trenholme encouraged the conversation about the dean.  It occurred to him to ask if there was a portrait extant of that worthy.  “We are such repetitions of our ancestors,” said he, “that I think it is a pity when family portraits are lacking.”

Mrs. Bennett regretted that her father’s modesty, the fortunes of the family, etc.; but she said there was a very good portrait of her uncle, the admiral, in his son’s house in London.

“I do not feel that I represent my ancestors in the least,” said Miss Bennett, “and I should be very sorry if I did.”

She certainly did not look very like her mother, as she sat with affectionate nearness to Sophia Rexford, accomplishing more work in an hour with her toil-reddened hands than her mother was likely to do in two.