at can rarely be found out of a commercial community.
He himself had been a convert to the sect, and like most converts,
he pushed his enthusiasm into the bigotry of the zealot; he saw no
salvation out of the pale into which he had entered. But though his
belief was sincere, it did not genially operate on his practical life;
with the most scrupulous attention to forms, he had the worldliness and
cunning of the carnal. He had abjured the vices of the softer senses,
but not that which so seldom wars on the decorums of outer life. He was
essentially a money-maker,--close, acute, keen, overreaching. Good works
with him were indeed as nothing,--faith the all in all. He was one of
the elect, and could not fall. Still, in this man there was all
the intensity which often characterizes a mind in proportion to the
narrowness of its compass; that intensity gave fire to his gloomy
eloquence, and strength to his obstinate will. He saw Lucretia, and his
zeal for her conversion soon expanded into love for her person; yet
that love was secondary to his covetousness. Though ostensibly in a
flourishing business, he was greatly distressed for money to carry on
operations which swelled beyond the reach of his capital; his fingers
itched for the sum which Lucretia had still at her disposal. But the
seeming sincerity of the man, the persuasion of his goodness, his
reputation for sanctity, deceived her; she believed herself honestly
and ardently beloved, and by one who could guide her back, if not to
happiness, at least to repose. She herself loved him not,--she could
love no more. But it seemed to her a luxury to find some one she could
trust, she could honour. If you had probed into the recesses of her mind
at that time, you would have found that no religious belief was there
settled,--only the desperate wish to believe; only the disturbance of
all previous infidelity; only a restless, gnawing desire to escape from
memory, to emerge from the gulf. In this troubled, impatient disorder
of mind and feeling, she hurried into a second marriage as fatal as the
first.

For a while she bore patiently all the privations of that ascetic
household, assisted in all those external formalities, centred all her
intellect within that iron range of existence. But no grace descended
on her soul,--no warm ray unlocked the ice of the well. Then, gradually
becoming aware of the niggardly meanness, of the harsh, uncharitable
judgments, of the decorous frauds tha