ce. Her pride silenced every other voice.

Religious hypocrisy is in our day a very rare thing; so little is to be
gained by it. To be sure, the vast majority of English people are
constantly guilty of hypocritical practices, but that, as a rule, is
mere testimony to the rootedness of their orthodox faith. Mr. Elgar.
shutting himself up between breakfast and chapel to write business
letters--which he pre- or post-dated--was ignoble enough, but not
therefore a hypocrite. Had a fatal accident happened to one of his
family whilst he was thus employed, he would not have succeeded in
persuading his conscience that the sin and the calamity were
unconnected. His wife had never admitted a doubt of its being required
by the immutable law of God that she should be sad and severe on
Sunday, that Reuben should be sternly punished for whistling on that
day, that little Miriam should be rewarded when she went through the
long services with unnatural stillness and demureness. Nor was Miriam
herself a hypocrite when, mistress of Redbeck House, she began to
establish her reputation and authority throughout dissenting Bartles.

Her instruction had been rigidly sectarian. Whatever she studied was
represented to her from the point of view of its relation to
Christianity as her teachers understood it. The Christian faith was
alone of absolute significance; all else that the mind of man could
contain was of more or less importance as more or less connected with
that single interest. To the time of her marriage, her outlook upon the
world was incredibly restricted. She had never read a book that would
not pass her mother's censorship; she had never seen a work of art; she
had never heard any but "sacred" music; she had never perused a
journal; she had never been to an entertainment--unless the name could
be given to a magic-lantern exhibition of views in Palestine, or the
like. Those with whom she associated had gone through a similar
training, and knew as little of life.

She had heard of "infidelity;" yes. Live as long as she might, she
would never forget one dreadful day when, in a quarrel with his mother,
Reuben uttered words which signified hatred and rejection of all he had
been taught to hold divine Mrs. Elgar's pallid, speechless horror; the
severe chastisement inflicted on the lad by his father;--she could
never look back on it all without sickness of heart. Thenceforth, her
brother and his wild ways embodied for her that awful thi