‘What is conscience without knowledge, sir?’ asked the client, using—­without knowing it—­the very argument of Mr. Knox to the Queen.

‘You have no other objections to the alliance?’ asked Merton.

’None whatever, sir.  She is a good and good-looking girl.  On most important points we are thoroughly agreed.  She won a prize essay on Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.  Of course Shakespeare could not have written them—­a thoroughly uneducated man, who never could have passed the fourth standard.  But look at the plays!  There are things in them that, with all our modern advantages, are beyond me.  I admit they are beyond me.  “To be, and to do, and to suffer,"’ declaimed Mr. Warren, apparently under the impression that this is part of Hamlet’s soliloquy—­’Shakespeare could never have written that.  Where did he learn grammar?’

‘Where, indeed?’ replied Merton.  ’But as the lady is in all other respects so suitable a match, cannot this one difficulty be got over?’

’Impossible, sir; my son could not slice the sleeve in her dress and inflict this priceless boon on her with affectionate violence.  Even the hero of Dr. Therne failed there—­’

‘And rather irritated his pretty Jane,’ added Merton, who remembered this heroic adventure.  ‘It is a very hard case,’ he went on, ’but I fear that our methods are powerless.  The only chance would be to divert young Mr. Warren’s affections into some other more enlightened channel.  That expedient has often been found efficacious.  Is he very deeply enamoured?  Would not the society of another pretty and intelligent girl perhaps work wonders?’

’Perhaps it might, sir, but I don’t know where to find any one that would attract my James.  Except for political meetings, and a literary lecture or two, with a magic-lantern and a piano, we have not much social relaxation at Bulcester.  We object to promiscuous dancing, on grounds of conscience.  Also, of course, to the stage.’

‘Ah, so you do allow for the claims of conscience, do you?’

’For what do you take me, sir?  Only, of course the conscience must be enlightened,’ said Mr. Warren, as other earnest people usually do.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Merton; ’nothing so dangerous as the unenlightened conscience.  Why, in this very matter of marriage the conscience of the Mormons leads them to singular aberrations, while that of the Arunta tribe—­but I should only pain you if I pursued the subject.  You said that your Society indulged in literary lectures:  is your programme for the season filled up?’

‘I am President of the Bulcester Literary Society,’ said Mr. Warren, ’and I ought to know.  We have a vacancy for Friday week; but why do you inquire?  In fact I want a lecturer on “The Use and Abuse of Novels,” now you ask.  Our people, somehow, always want their literary lectures to be about novels.  I try to make the lecturers take a lofty moral tone, and usually entertain them at my house, where I probe their ideas, and warn them that we must have nothing loose.  Once, sir, we had a lecturer on “The Oldest Novel in the World.”  He gave us a terrible shock, sir!  I never saw so many red cheeks in a Bulcester audience.  And the man seemed quite unaware of the effect he was producing.’