f native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.

The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single
point. There was one subject on which no word ever passed between them.
The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle to
cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and
father, and no word ever passed between them implying a suspicion of the
loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother
only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, "I should think you were
in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter."

This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange
suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams and
reveries. The thought once admitted that another's life is becoming
superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul. Woe
to the man or woman whose days are passed in watching the hour-glass
through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a
skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with
those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly, or
some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an
idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.

It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to some
fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to yield
to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but he did
not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more desperate
sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of emotional
relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name of
religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on the
territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and yet be so near, the
pleasant garden of the Adversary, that his dangerous fruits and flowers
are within easy reach. Once tasted, the next step is like to be the
scaling of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond of this border
land. His imagination was wandering over it too often when his pen was
travelling almost of itself along the weary parallels of the page before
him.