though she could not tell how deeply.  But the Rector must be considered, and he had taken an instant and almost frantic dislike for the youth.  There was nothing unusual in this:  for, like many another uxorious man (with all his faults of temper he was uxorious), Mr. Wesley hated that anyone should offer love to his daughters.  This antipathy of his had been a nuisance for ten years past; since the girls were, when all was said, honest healthy girls with an instinct for mating, and not to be blamed for making their best of the suitors which Epworth and its neighbourhood provided.  But since Sukey’s marriage it had deepened into something like a mania, and now, in Hetty’s case, flared up with a passion incomprehensible if not quite insane.  He declared his hatred of lawyers—­and certainly he had suffered at their hands:  he forbade the young man to visit the house, to correspond with Hetty, even to see her.

Mrs. Wesley watched her daughter and was troubled.  The Rector’s veto had been effective enough once or twice with Hetty’s sisters.  Emilia, on a visit with her uncle Matthew in London, had fallen passionately in love with a young Oxonian named Leybourne.  But Sam’s wife had discovered something to his discredit and had spoken to Sam, and Sam to the Rector.  The match was broken off, and Emilia renounced her love, though she never forgave the mischief-maker.  Patty again had formed an attachment for John Romley, who had been a pupil of Sam’s, had afterwards graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was now the ambitious young master of the Free School at Epworth.  Again the Rector interfered, and Patty sighed and renounced her romance.  Would Hetty, too, renounce and acquiesce?  Mrs. Wesley doubted:  nay, was even afraid.  Hetty alone had never been overawed by her father, had never acknowledged the patria potestas with all its exorbitant claims.  She had never actually revolted, but she defied, somehow, the spell he had cast upon the others:  and somehow—­ here was the marvel—­Mrs. Wesley, who more than any other of the family had yielded to the illusion and fostered it, understood Hetty the better for her independence.  The others, under various kinds of pressure, had submitted:  but here was the very woman she might have been, but for her own submission!  And she feared for that woman.  Hetty must leave Wroote, or there was no knowing how it might end.

“Mother, I believe you are afraid of what I may do.”

Mrs. Wesley, incapable of a lie or anything resembling it, bent her head.  “I have been afraid, once or twice,” she said.

“So you send me away?  That seems to me neither very brave nor very wise.  Will there be less danger at Kelstein?”

Her mother started.  “Does he know of your going?  You don’t tell me he means to visit you there?”

“Forgive me, dearest mother, but your first question is a little foolish—­eh?” Hetty laughed and quoted: