But, flourishing though St. Jerome's was, people were talking about it in anything but a reverend manner. Sir Karl Andinnian was blamed for allowing it to go on unchecked--as he told his wife. Had Karl been a perfectly free man, unswayed by that inward and ever-present dread, he had certainly put a stop to it long ago, or obliged Farmer Truefit to do so; but as it was, he had done nothing. Not a single male person attended the services; and most of the ladies who did so were in their teens, or not much beyond them. Karl felt that this was not as it should be: but he had made no move to alter it. The sensitive fear of making enemies swayed him. Not fear for his own sake, but lest it should in some way draw observation on the Maze and on him whom it contained. When the mind is weighed down with an awful secret, danger seems to lie in everything, reasonable and unreasonable. But Karl found he must do something.
A comic incident happened one day. There came a lady to Foxwood Court, sending in her card as "Mrs. Brown" and asking to see Sir Karl Andinnian. Sir Karl found she was from Basham. She had come over to pray him, she said with tears in her eyes, that he would put a stop to the goings-on at St. Jerome's and shut up the place. She had two daughters who had been drawn into its vortex and she could not draw them out again. Twice and three times every day of their lives did they come over to Foxwood, by rail, omnibus, or on foot; their whole thoughts and days were absorbed by St. Jerome's: by the services, by cleaning the church, by Mr. Cattacomb's lectures at home, or in helping Mr. Puff teach the children. Sir Karl replied that he did not know what he could do in the matter, and intimated very courteously that the more effectual remedy in regard to the Miss Browns would be for Mrs. Brown to keep the young ladies at home. They would not be kept at home, Mrs. Brown said with a burst of sobs; they had learnt to set her at defiance: and--she begged to hint to Sir Karl--that in her opinion it was not quite the right thing for a young girl to be closeted with a young man, for half an hour at a time, under plea of confession, though the man did write himself priest. What on earth had they got to confess, Mrs. Brown wanted to know, becoming a little heated with the argument: if they'd confess how undutiful they were to her, their mother, perhaps some good might come of it.