n than any other I ever
knew. The divine wonder was, that she had not yet driven the delicate,
truth-loving Arctura mad. From her childhood she had had the ordering
of all her opinions: whatever Sophy Carmichael said, lady Arctura never
thought of questioning. A lie is indeed a thing in its nature
unbelievable, but there is a false belief always ready to receive the
false truth, and there is no end to the mischief the two can work. The
awful punishment of untruth in the inward parts is that the man is
given over to believe a lie.

Lady Arctura was in herself a gentle creature who shrank from either
giving or receiving a rough touch; but she had an inherited pride, by
herself unrecognized as such, which made her capable of hurting as well
as being hurt. Next to the doctrines of the Scottish church, she
respected her own family: it had in truth no other claim to respect
than that its little good and much evil had been done before the eyes
of a large part of many generations--whence she was born to think
herself distinguished, and to imagine a claim for the acknowledgment of
distinction upon all except those of greatly higher rank than her own.
This inborn arrogance was in some degree modified by respect for the
writers of certain books--not one of whom was of any regard in the eyes
of the thinkers of the age. Of any writers of power, beyond those of
the Bible, either in this country or another, she knew nothing. Yet
she had a real instinct for what was good in literature; and of the
writers to whom I have referred she not only liked the worthiest best,
but liked best their best things. I need hardly say they were all
religious writers; for the keen conscience and obedient heart of the
girl had made her very early turn herself towards the quarter where the
sun ought to rise, the quarter where all night long gleams the auroral
hope; but unhappily she had not gone direct to the heavenly well in
earthly ground--the words of the Master himself. How could she? From
very childhood her mind had been filled with traditionary utterances
concerning the divine character and the divine plans--the merest
inventions of men far more desirous of understanding what they were not
required to understand, than of doing what they were required to
do--whence their crude and false utterances concerning a God of their
own fancy--in whom it was a good man's duty, in the name of any
possible God, to disbelieve; and just because she was tr