. And I shall send you some stock from the castle, and you
can cook his vegetables in good strong gravy, unbeknown."

The Widow Gough chuckled aloud.

"But stay," said Mrs. Gaunt; "for us to play the woman so, and delude a
saint for his mere bodily weal, will it not be a sin, and a sacrilege to
boot?"

"Let that flea stick in the wall," said Betty, contemptuously. "Find you
the meat, and I'll find the deceit: for he is as poor as a rat into the
bargain. Nay, nay, God Almighty will never have the heart to burn us two
for such a trifle. Why 't is no more than cheating a froward child into
taking 's physic."

Mrs. Gaunt got into her carriage and went home, thinking all the way.
What she had heard filled her with feelings strangely but sweetly
composed of veneration and pity. In that Leonard was a great orator and
a high-minded priest, she revered him; in that he was solitary and sad,
she pitied him; in that he wanted common sense, she felt like a mother,
and must take him under her wing. All true women love to protect;
perhaps it is a part of the great maternal element: but to protect a
man, and yet look up to him, this is delicious. It satisfies their
double craving; it takes them by both breasts, as the saying is.

Leonard, in truth, was one of those high-strung men who pay for their
periods of religious rapture by hours of melancholy. This oscillation of
the spirits in extraordinary men appears to be more or less a law of
nature; and this the Widow Gough was not aware of.

The very next Sunday, while he was preaching, she and Mrs. Gaunt's
gardener were filling his bow-window with flower-pots, the flowers in
full bloom and leaf. The said window was large and had a broad sill
outside, and inside, one of the old-fashioned high window-seats that
follow the shape of the window. Mrs. Gaunt, who did nothing by halves,
sent up a cart-load of flower-pots, and Betty and the gardener arranged
at least eighty of them, small and great, inside and outside the window.

When Leonard returned from preaching, Betty was at the door to watch. He
came past the window with his hands on his breast, and his eyes on the
ground, and never saw the flowers in his own window. Betty was
disgusted. However, she followed him stealthily as he went to his room,
and she heard a profound "Ah!" burst from him.

She bustled in and found him standing in a rapture, with the blood
mantling in his pale cheeks, and his dark eyes glowing.

"Now blessed