her affection for her own circle did not in the least prevent her from perceiving their absurdities.  She was not all loyalty and devotion, nor did she pretend to be interested in things for which she did not care.  There were many conventions, which Howard for the first time discovered that he himself unconsciously held, which Maud did not think in the least important.  Howard began to see that he himself had really been a somewhat conventional person, with a respect for success and position and dignity and influence.  He saw that his own chief motive had been never to do anything disagreeable or unreasonable or original or decisive; he began to see that his unconscious aim had been to fit himself without self-assertion into his circle, and to make himself unobtrusively necessary to people.  Maud had no touch of this in her nature at all; her only ambition seemed to be to be loved, which was accompanied by what seemed to Howard a marvellous incapacity for being shocked by anything; she was wholly innocent and ingenuous, but yet he found to his surprise that she knew something of the dark corners of life, and the moral problems of village life were a matter of course to her.  He had naturally supposed that a girl would have been fenced round by illusions; but it was not so.  She had seen and observed and drawn her conclusions.  She thought very little of what one commonly called sins, and her indignation seemed aroused by nothing but cruelty and treachery.  It became clear to Howard that Mr. Sandys and Mrs. Graves had been very wise in the matter, and that Maud had not been brought up in any silly ignorance of human frailty.  Her religion was equally a surprise to him.  He had thought that a girl brought up as Maud had been would be sure to hold a tissue of accepted beliefs which he must be careful not to disturb.  But here again she seemed to have little but a few fine principles, set in a simple Christian framework.  They were talking about this one day, and Maud laughed at something he said.

“You need not be so cautious,” she said, “though I like you to be cautious—­you are afraid of hurting me; but you won’t do that!  Cousin Anne taught me long ago that it was no use believing anything unless you understood more or less where it was leading you.  It’s no good pretending to know.  Cousin Anne once said to me that one had to choose between science and superstition.  I don’t know anything about science, but I’m not superstitious.”

“Yes,” said Howard, “I see—­I won’t be fussy any more; I will just speak as I think.  You are wiser than the aged, child!  You will have to help me out.  I am a mass of crusted prejudices, I find; but you are melting them all away.  What beats me is how you found it all out.”