very
different man? The sense of relief she had when Eppy went, lay in being
delivered from the presence of something clandestine, with which she
could not interfere so far as to confess knowledge of it. It had
rendered her uneasy; she had felt shy and uncomfortable. Once or twice
she had been on the point of saying to Mrs. Brookes that she thought
her cousin and Eppy very oddly familiar, but had failed of courage. It
was no wonder therefore that she should be more cheerful.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ARCTURA AND SOPHIA.

About this time her friend, Miss Carmichael, returned from a rather
lengthened visit. But after the atonement that had taken place between
her and Donal, it was with some anxiety that lady Arctura looked
forward to seeing her. She shrank from telling her what had come about
through the wonderful poem, as she thought it, which had so bewitched
her. She shrank too from showing her the verses: they were not of a
kind, she was sure, to meet with recognition from her. She knew she
would make game of them, and that not good-humouredly like Kate, who
yet confessed to some beauty in them. For herself, the poem and the
study of its growth had ministered so much nourishment to certain
healthy poetic seeds lying hard and dry in her bosom, that they had
begun to sprout, indeed to shoot rapidly up. Donal's poem could not
fail therefore to be to her thenceforward something sacred. A related
result also was that it had made her aware of something very defective
in her friend's constitution: she did not know whether in her
constitution mental, moral, or spiritual: probably it was in all three.
Doubtless, thought Arctura, she knew most things better than she, and
certainly had a great deal more common sense; but, on the other hand,
was she not satisfied with far less than she could be satisfied with?
To believe as her friend believed would not save her from insanity! She
must be made on a smaller scale of necessities than herself! How was
she able to love the God she said she believed in? God should at least
be as beautiful as his creature could imagine him! But Miss Carmichael
would say her poor earthly imagination was not to occupy itself with
such a high subject! Oh, why would not God tell her something about
himself--something direct--straight from himself? Why should she only
hear of him at second hand--always and always?

Alas, poor girl! second hand? Five hundredth hand rather? And she might
have been all th