er to put aside such insincerity as unworthy of her. He
reminded her of the long months she had spent at Warpington with its
peculiar spiritual opportunities; that he should be to blame if he did
not press upon her the first importance of the religious life, the
ever-present love of God, and the means of approaching Him through the
sacraments. He entreated her to join her prayers with his that she might
be saved from the worship of her own talent, which had shut out the
worship of God, from this dreadful indifference to holy things, and the
impatience of all religious teaching which he grieved to see in her.

He spoke well, the earnest, blind, would-be leader endeavoring to guide
her to the ditch from which he knew not how she had emerged,
passionately distressed at the opposition he met with as he would have
drawn her lovingly towards it.

The tears were in Hester's eyes, but the eyes themselves were as flint
seen through water. She stifled many fierce and cruel impulses to speak
as plainly as he did, to tell him that it was not religion that was
abhorent to her, but the form in which he presented it to her, and that
the sin against the Holy Ghost was disbelief, like his, in the religion
of others. But when have such words availed anything? When have they
been believed? Hester had a sharp tongue, and she was slowly learning to
beware of it as her worst enemy. She laid down many weapons before she
trusted herself to speak.

"It is good of you to care what becomes of me," she said, gently, but
her voice was cold. "I am sorry you regard me as you do. But from your
point of view you were right to speak--as--as you have done. I value the
affection that prompted it."

"She can't meet me fairly," said Mr. Gresley to himself, with sudden
anger at the meanness of such tactics. "They say she is so clever, and
she can't refute a word I say. She appears to yield and then defies me.
She always puts me off like that."

The sun had vanquished the mist, and in the brilliant light the two
figures moved silently, side by side, back to the house, one with
something very like rage in his heart, the rage that in bygone days
found expression in stake and fagot.

Perhaps the heaviest trouble which Hester was ever called upon to bear
had its mysterious beginnings on that morning of opal and gossamer when
the magnolia opened.

CHAPTER XXIV

Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irrefutables, de ces
arguments q