Already when Dolly was a toddling little mite and met her mother's

father in the church in Marylebone, it had struck her as odd that

while they themselves were so poor and ill-clad, her grandpapa

should be such a grand old gentleman of such a dignified aspect.

As she grew older and older, and began to understand a little more

the world she lived in, she wondered yet more profoundly how it

could happen, if her grandpapa was indeed the Very Reverend, the

Dean of Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her

father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage

company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people--almost

as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish

them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine

houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with

a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of

Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for

facts like these were what interested Dolly. She couldn't

understand, then, why she and her mother should live precariously

in a very small attic; should never be visited by her mother's

brothers, one of whom she knew to be a Prebendary of Old Sarum,

while the other she saw gazetted as a Colonel of Artillery; and

should be totally ignored by her mother's sister, Ermyntrude, who

lolled in a landau down the sunny side of Bond Street.

At first, indeed, it only occurred to Dolly that her mother's

extreme and advanced opinions had induced a social breach between

herself and the orthodox members of her family. Even that Dolly

resented; why should mamma hold ideas of her own which shut her

daughter out from the worldly advantages enjoyed to the full by the

rest of her kindred? Dolly had no particular religious ideas; the

subject didn't interest her; and besides, she thought the New

Testament talked about rich and poor in much the same unpractical

nebulous way that mamma herself did--in fact, she regarded it with

some veiled contempt as a rather sentimental radical publication.

But, she considered, for all that, that it was probably true enough

as far as the facts and the theology went; and she couldn't

understand why a person like mamma should cut herself off

contumaciously from the rest of the world by presuming to

disbelieve a body of doctrine which so many rich and well-gaitered

bishops held worthy of credence. All stylish society accepted the

tenets of the Church of England. But in time it began to occur to

her that there might be some deeper and, as she herself would have

said, more disgraceful reason for her mother's alienation from so

respectable a family. For to Dolly, that was disgraceful which the

world held to be so. Things in themselves, apart from the world's

word, had for her no existence. Step by step, as she grew up to

blushing womanhood, it began to strike her with surprise that her

grandfather's name had been, like her own, Barton. "Did you marry

your cousin, mamma?" she asked Herminia one day quite suddenly.




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