was not for himself only; it was for what that
sweet-faced soul must suffer, under such guardianship as that of
Thornton Rush.

Hubert Lisle at once rightly inferred the destination of those letters
which had never reached him; and he glared fiercely at the fireplace now
filled with green boughs, that had afforded flame to enwrap aught so
precious. O, cruel flames, to blot out two such privileges--giving
consolation to a dying father, and receiving from his hands a wife
little less beautiful or good than an angel! And more cruel than flame,
than direful fate, than death itself, the heart of Rusha Lisle, which
Hubert would fain have trodden into indiscriminate dust, in his first
moments of grief and wrath.

An intense desire of revenge took possession of this outraged son; more
particularly of revenge against Thornton Rush, whose duplicity in
winning Althea was circumstantially detailed to him.

Hubert Lisle had not only traveled extensively, but had read and studied
deeply. He had scanned all religions, from that of Confucius to
Mormonism and Free-loveism, which is _beyond_ religion, and had no
settled faith in any. He had dived into German transcendentalism and
metaphysics so deeply that he came out clogged and permeated as a fly
miraculously escaped from a jar of honey. He was naturally good and
true, simple minded and high principled; but unlicensed, untrammelled
thought, unsubjective to God's law, had rendered him liable to erect
false theories upon unsound premises, and had undermined in a measure
that nice sense of right and wrong, which had been his proud, happy
birth-right. Yet he would have been startled to have been told that he
was not now, as ever, a bold lover of the truth, that he scorned not
deception and hypocrisy and all manner of evil. He would have bounded,
as from the sting of a serpent, from open temptation to meanness and
wrong. He walked upon the border of a precipice, not knowing but he was
upon the open plain. Thus walketh human frailty, when unenlightened by
faith in God and unfortified by heavenly counsel.

A modern "reformer," self-styled, acting as a "spiritual medium," is
said thus to have addressed a visitor:

"It is my very strong impression that you are my affinity. You are to be
my husband; I am to be your wife. You must seek a divorce; so will I,
and happiness awaits us."

Two divorces ensued, and the gentleman visitor and the "medium" became
one, an affinity, according to "spir