Her incoherent phrases had sprung from the heart, and the picture rose
before him of the stout but frightened, good-natured lady who had never
accustomed herself to the enjoyment of wealth and luxury. Mr. Ferguson
was in such a state, and he must please not tell her husband that she had
written. Yet much in his sermon had struck her as so true. It seemed
wrong to her to have so much, and others so little! And he had made her
remember many things in her early life she had forgotten. She hoped he
would see Mr. Ferguson, and talk to him. . . .

Then there was Mrs. Constable's short note, that troubled and puzzled
him. This, too, had in it an undercurrent of fear, and the memory came
to him of the harrowing afternoon he had once spent with her, when she
would have seemed to have predicted the very thing which had now happened
to him. And yet not that thing. He divined instinctively that a maturer
thought on the subject of his sermon had brought on an uneasiness as the
full consequences of this new teaching had dawned upon her consequences
which she had not foreseen when she had foretold the change. And he
seemed to read between the lines that the renunciation he demanded was
too great. Would he not let her come and talk to him? . . .

Miss Brewer, a lady of no inconsiderable property, was among those who
told him plainly that if he remained they would have to give up their
pews. Three or four communications were even more threatening. Mr.
Alpheus Gore, Mrs. Plimpton's brother, who at five and forty had managed
to triple his share of the Gore inheritance, wrote that it would be his
regretful duty to send to the bishop an Information on the subject of Mr.
Hodder's sermon.

There were, indeed, a few letters which he laid, thankfully, in a pile by
themselves. These were mostly from certain humble members of his parish