The destructive wave has spent itself, and at Oxford now many of us feel ourselves on the upward swell of a religious revival.' Catherine looked up at him with a sweet sympathetic look.

That dim vision of Oxford, with its gray, tree-lined walls, lay very near to her heart for her father's sake.

And the keen face above her seemed to satisfy and respond to her inner feeling.
'I know the High Church influence is very strong,' she said, hesitating; 'but I don't know whether father would have liked that much 'better.' The last words had slipped out of her, and she checked herself suddenly.
Robert saw that she was uncertain as to his opinions, and afraid lest she might have said something discourteous.
'It is not only the High Church influence,' he said quickly, 'it is a mixture of influences from all sorts of quarters that has brought about the new state of things.

Some of the factors in the change were hardly Christian at all, by name, but they have all helped to make men think, to stir their hearts, to win them back to the old ways.' His voice had taken to itself a singular magnetism.

Evidently the matters they were discussing were matters in which he felt a deep and loving interest.