With her faith in the arbitrary presentment of the religion that had been imposed upon her, Lily also lost much of her childish faith in the essential infallibility of her father.
His religious beliefs were his own, and she did not seek to question them, but she resented more and more having been brought up to suppose that such beliefs could be transmitted wholesale, to be received without question and without analysis. No such acceptance, she thought, could be of enduring value. Discontent possessed her.
She continued to take pleasure in the many enjoyments that awaited her, but she knew that she was missing happiness.
Alternately, Lily blamed and pitied herself.
XVII
Nicholas Aubray had no idea that he made certain remarks at certain hours of every day, with almost clock-work regularity.
It was left to his wife to make this discovery and others; her critical faculty developing with every year, the years themselves still too few to prevent her from putting her discoveries into words.
"You mustn't be too sharp in your judgment of other people, my dear," Nicholas said to her from time to time, without any more direct reference to an increasing uneasiness in the atmosphere, that he would not, indeed, admit even to himself.
Lily, too, had her reticences.