she could not help seeing
the justice of Master Gridley's remark, that for a young person to go and
break in on the hours that a minister requires for his studies, without
being accompanied by a mature friend who would remind her when it was
time to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness in asking
her to call upon him. She promised, therefore, that she would never go
without having Mrs. Hopkins as her companion, and with this assurance her
old friend rested satisfied.

It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason for his advice
than those with which he satisfied the simple nature of Susan Posey. Of
that it will be easier to judge after a glance at the conditions and
character of the minister and his household.

The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal advantages already
alluded to, some other qualities which might prove attractive to many
women. He had, in particular, that art of sliding into easy intimacy
with them which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and, above
all, confidence in one's powers. There was little doubt, the gossips
maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been
willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his
yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the burden.

That lady must have been some years older than her husband,--how many we
need not inquire too curiously,--but in vitality she had long passed the
prime in which he was still flourishing. She had borne him five
children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life wearied
her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister's wife;
she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and her
thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to
increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the
spirit.

But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious
depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her husband
what she had been to him, and felt it with something of
self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true and
tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which
had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought, but lay
unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking
consciousn