o is there with whom we would care to exchange places? There are so
many kinds of people and so many things for humanity to contend against,
I don't know that I should want to change burdens with anyone."

"Mrs. Dyke, for instance, would you not think yourself fortunate to be
like her?" said Kate, with a merry twinkle in her eyes.

"Oh, deliver me from that comparison! Why, she carries everybody's sins
on her shoulders; I even heard she had taken Robert Elsmere to throw at
the world!" laughed Grace.

"But not his wife; she didn't read about her. Wasn't it too funny to
hear her go on last night, and the way she looked at the minister to
emphasize her position?"

"Yes, but how many there are like her--read just enough to know there
are such and such characters and such and such incidents. Now of course
she has heard the minister define Robert's crime, as he would call it I
suppose, so she thinks she can use the whole argument," replied Grace, a
little scornfully.

"Mrs. Hayden interposed just at the right time. I was glad she did, too.
It seems she has considered Catherine's position and could speak a good
word for her," said Kate, sipping her tea, thoughtfully.

"Well, if she calls her an ideal of wifely love, I don't admire the
reality," exclaimed Grace, with more vigor than elegance, as she put
down her tea-cup.

"I got positively impatient," she continued, "when I read about her
cruelty to Robert, judging him in that inquisitor's fashion. Poor
fellow! _I_ think he died of a broken heart."

"But, Grace, she did what she thought was her religious duty, and it
must have been hard for her to withdraw herself so completely when she
loved him so much," said the more charitable Kate.

"Do you call that love which would let him go tramping off alone, with
not even a word of sympathy, and so afraid that her religion would be
contaminated she could not even hear him preach? I don't pretend to be
religious, but any religion stands on a poor foundation if it can be
swept away by anybody's opinions."

"It wasn't that; it was because she thought it was wrong to listen to
heresy, as she supposed it was, and----"

"How did she know? Had she taken pains to find out? Did she study it
carefully and have a reason for her cruel judgment?" interrupted the
wrathful Grace.

"Well, she was conscientious and was doing what she had been taught was
right."

"Kate, if there is anything that makes me out of patience with people
it