It could not be levity or fickleness of character which induced his daughter to act with so much apparent inconsistency towards the man of his choice, and whom she had so lately unequivocally owned to be also the man of her own.

What external force there could exist, of a kind powerful enough to change the resolutions she had so decidedly expressed within twenty-four hours, was a matter of complete mystery.
"But I will be as obstinate as she can be," thought the glover, "and she shall either marry Henry Smith without farther delay or old Simon Glover will know an excellent reason to the contrary." The subject was not renewed during the evening; but early on the next morning, just at sun rising, Catharine knelt before the bed in which her parent still slumbered.

Her heart sobbed as if it would burst, and her tears fell thick upon her father's face.

The good old man awoke, looked up, crossed his child's forehead, and kissed her affectionately.
"I understand thee, Kate," he said; "thou art come to confession, and, I trust, art desirous to escape a heavy penance by being sincere." Catharine was silent for an instant.
"I need not ask, my father, if you remember the Carthusian monk, Clement, and his preachings and lessons; at which indeed you assisted so often, that you cannot be ignorant men called you one of his converts, and with greater justice termed me so likewise ?" "I am aware of both," said the old man, raising himself on his elbow; "but I defy foul fame to show that I ever owned him in any heretical proposition, though I loved to hear him talk of the corruptions of the church, the misgovernment of the nobles, and the wild ignorance of the poor, proving, as it seemed to me, that the sole virtue of our commonweal, its strength and its estimation, lay among the burgher craft of the better class, which I received as comfortable doctrine, and creditable to the town.

And if he preached other than right doctrine, wherefore did his superiors in the Carthusian convent permit it?
If the shepherds turn a wolf in sheep's clothing into the flock, they should not blame the sheep for being worried." "They endured his preaching, nay, they encouraged it," said Catharine, "while the vices of the laity, the contentions of the nobles, and the oppression of the poor were the subject of his censure, and they rejoiced in the crowds who, attracted to the Carthusian church, forsook those of the other convents.