Long before the Groombridges could be brought to believe that the brilliant and favourite young cousin had rejected all that they could leave him, it had become a matter of course to the rest of the family and their friends that Mark Molyneux would be a priest, and give up the property to the younger brother.

When the outer world took up the matter, Father Molyneux always made people feel as if allusions to his renunciation of Groombridge were simply quite out of taste, and nothing out of taste seemed in keeping with anything connected with him.  It was all so simple to Mark, and so perfect to Canon Nicholls, that the latter almost dreaded this very perfection as unlikely, and unbefitting the “second-rate” planet in which it was his lot to live.  And to confirm this almost superstitious feeling of a man who had lived to know where the jolts and jars of life cause the acutest suffering to the idealist, had come this fresh aspiration of Mark’s after a life more completely perfect in itself.  Strong instincts were entirely in accord with the older man’s sober judgment of the situation.  And yet he wished it could be otherwise.  He had no opinion of the world that Mark wanted to give up.  He would most willingly have shut any cloister door between that world and his cherished son in the spirit.  It was with no light heart that he wanted him to face all the roughness of human goodness, all the blinding confusion of its infirmities, all the cruelty of its vices.  The old man’s own service in his last years was but to stand and wait, but, even so, he was too often oppressed by the small things that fill up empty hours, small uncharitablenesses, small vanities, small irritations.  Was it not a comfort at such moments to believe that in another world we should know human nature in others and in ourselves without any cause for repugnance and without any ground for fear?

CHAPTER XVIII

MADAME DANTERRE’S ANSWER

At last there came a letter to Molly from her mother.

     “CARISSIMA,—­

“I thank you for your most kind intentions.  I too have at times thought of seeing you.  But I am now far too ill, and I have no attention to spare from my unceasing efforts to keep well.  I can assure you that two doctors and two nurses spend their time and skill on the struggle.  I may, they tell me, live many years yet if I am not troubled and disturbed.  I had, by nature, strong maternal instincts; it was your father’s knowledge of that side of my character which made his conduct in taking you from me almost criminal in its cruelty.  You must have had a most tiresome childhood with his sister, and probably you gave her a great deal of trouble.  Your letter affected me with several moments of suffocation, and the doctors and nurses are of opinion that I must not risk any more maternal emotions.  My poor wants are now very expensive.  I am obliged to have