ther way--though she clung to
them with all the tenacity of a creature with claws, occasioned her not
an atom of mental discomposure: perhaps that was in part why she clung
to them! they were as she would have them! She did not trouble herself
about what God required of her, beyond holding the doctrine the holding
of which guaranteed, as she thought, her future welfare. Conscience
toward God had very little to do with her opinions, and her heart still
less. Her head on the contrary, perhaps rather her memory, was
considerably occupied with the matter; nothing she held had ever been
by her regarded on its own merits--that is, on its individual claim to
truth; if it had been handed down by her church, that was enough; to
support it she would search out text after text, and press it into the
service. Any meaning but that which the church of her fathers gave to
a passage must be of the devil, and every man opposed to the truth who
saw in that meaning anything but truth! It was indeed impossible Miss
Carmichael should see any meaning but that, even if she had looked for
it; she was nowise qualified for discovering truth, not being herself
true. What she saw and loved in the doctrines of her church was not
the truth, but the assertion; and whoever questioned, not to say the
doctrine, but even the proving of it by any particular passage, was a
dangerous person, and unsound. All the time her acceptance and defence
of any doctrine made not the slightest difference to her life--as
indeed how should it?

Such was the only friend lady Arctura had. But the conscience and
heart of the younger woman were alive to a degree that boded ill either
for the doctrine that stinted their growth, or the nature unable to
cast it off. Miss Carmichael was a woman about six-and-twenty--and had
been a woman, like too many Scotch girls, long before she was out of
her teens--a human flower cut and dried--an unpleasant specimen, and by
no means valuable from its scarcity. Self-sufficient, assured, with
scarce shyness enough for modesty, handsome and hard, she was
essentially a self-glorious Philistine; nor would she be anything
better till something was sent to humble her, though what spiritual
engine might be equal to the task was not for man to imagine. She was
clever, but her cleverness made nobody happier; she had great
confidence, but her confidence gave courage to no one, and took it from
many; she had little fancy, and less imaginatio