own
suspicious), the rapid moral decay of Boston society. "Alas!" sighs my
heroine; "but what a comfort, ma'am, to think that neither of us belongs
to it!" Add to this that she has learning enough to equip ten
_precieuses_--and hides it: has read Plato and can quote her Virgil by
the page--but forbears. Yet all this while you have suspected me, no
doubt, of raving over a '_Belle Sauvage_, a Pocahontas.

Well, I shall watch her progress. . . . I have become so nearly a part
of Vyell that I charge myself to stand for him and supply what he lacks.
He loves her; she loves him to doting; but I cannot see into their
future.

Vyell, by the way, charges me to request your good offices with Mr. Mann
to procure him a couple of Tuscan vases. I know that your friend is
infinitely obliging to all who approach him through you: and this
request which my letter carries as a tag should have been its pretext,
as in fact it was its occasion. Adieu! my dear sir.

Yours most sincerely,

BAT. LANGTON.

Chapter II.

SIR OLIVER SAILS.

Mr. Langton was right. Theologians, preaching mysteries, are
helpless before the logical mind until they abandon defence and
boldly attack their opponents' capital incapacity, saying, "Precisely
because you insist upon daylight, you miss discovering the stars."
The battle is a secular one, and that sentence contains the reason,
too, why it will never be ended in this world. But the theologians
may strengthen their conviction, if not their argument, by noting how
often the more delicate shades of human feeling will oppose
themselves to the logical mind as a mere wall of blindness.

Oliver Vyell loved his bride as passionately as his nature, hardened
by his past, allowed him. To the women who envied her, to the
gossips and backbiters, he opposed a nescience inexpugnable,
unscalable as a wall of polished stone: but the mischief was, he
equally ignored her sensitiveness.

Being sensitive, she understood the hostile shadows better than the
hard protecting fence. To noble natures enemies are often nearer
than friends, and more easily forgiven.

But Mr. Langton was also right in guessing her ignorant of the
rumours set going by Silk, who, as yet, had whispered falsehoods
only. The worst rumour of all--the truth--was beyond his courage.

Ruth loved her lord devoutly. To love him was so easy that it seemed
no repayment of her infinite debt. She