which both should endeavour to amend their ways.
Jane was sullen and unresponsive, too much overcome by surprise perhaps
to be able to express any gratitude. That she felt it all the same was
testified by her dog-like devotion to her mistress. All went well until
another year had passed, when in a sudden burst of emotion the maid
confessed to a fresh peccadillo. Now, indeed, any sane person would
have realised the folly of keeping such a sinner in the house, and,
hurling reproaches on her head, would have promptly ejected her from the
threshold; but Aunt Mary was once more content to play the part of
comforter. "I have my own besetting sins, Jane," she said gently, "and
I fear I have given way to them many times during this past year. You
have kept straight until the last week, and you have confessed your
fault. Have courage! You have made a good start. I shall treat you
exactly as before, and trust you more fully!"

That was the end of Jane's offences. Henceforth to the day of her
mistress's death she remained the most faithful and loyal of handmaids.
Such was Aunt Mary, who devoutly worshipped a God whom she believed
capable of torturing for eternity a sinner who had transgressed during a
few short years of life, or a helpless infant who had chanced to die
unbaptised! She was likewise convinced that the whole non-Protestant
world was irrevocably damned, and harboured serious doubts with regard
to Dissenters and the High Church party. She accepted as final and
irrefutable every doctrine which she had been taught as a child, and
would have been as ready to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale as
the accepted version of the story, if it had been so inscribed in the
Bible. To think for oneself on matters religious she considered
profane; to expect fuller light with fuller knowledge--a blasphemy. To
her mind the whole duty of man was comprised in attending his parish
church, supporting his vicar, and subscribing to the creeds--Athanasian
included. Aunt and niece had had the nearest approach to a quarrel
which they had ever known one day when the girl's intolerance had broken
forth into words:

"Aunt Mary," she had cried, "your religion is _wicked_! You are good in
spite of it. You don't _really_ believe it. You only think you do.
You subscribe ten and sixpence a year to the South American mission, and
lie down in peace and sleep, believing the whole continent to be damned,
while if one poor dog were suf