d, clasping her hands before him and raising her eyes to his face.

"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" murmured the minister to
himself. Then he answered her:

"Yes, I do pity you very much. I pity you for your sins and sufferings.
But more than all I pity you for the moral and spiritual blindness of
which you do not even seem to be suspicious, far less conscious."

"I do not understand you," murmured Mary Grey, in a low, frightened
tone.

"No, you do not understand me. Well, I will try to explain. You have
pleaded your youth as an excuse for your first 'false step,' as you call
it. But I tell you that a girl who is old enough to sin is old enough to
know better than to sin. And if you were not morally and spiritually
blind you would see this. Secondly, you have pleaded your
necessities--that is, your interests--as a just cause and excuse for
your matrimonial engagement with Governor Cavendish, and for your
eavesdropping in this house, and also for your false statements to me.
But I tell you if you had been as truly penitent as you professed to be
you would have felt no necessity so pressing as the necessity for true
repentance, forgiveness and amendment. And if you had not been morally
and spiritually blind you would have seen this also. I sometimes think
that it may be my duty to discover you to this family. Yet I will be
candid with you. I fear that if you should be turned adrift here you
might, and probably would, fall into deeper sin. Therefore I will not
expose you--for the present, and upon conditions. You are safe from me
so long as you remain true, honest and faithful to this household. But
upon the slightest indication of any sort of duplicity or double dealing
I shall unmask you to Madam Cavendish. And now you had better retire.
Good-night."

And with these words the old man walked to a side-table, took a bed-room
candle in his hand and gave it to the widow.

Mary Grey snatched and kissed his hand, courtesied and withdrew.

When she got to her own room she threw herself into a chair and laughed
softly, murmuring:

"The old Pharisee! He is more than half in love with me now. I know it,
and I feel it. Yet, to save his own credit with himself, he pretends to
lecture me and tries to persuade himself that he means it. But he is
half in love with me. Before I have done with him he shall be wholly in
love with me. And won't it be fun to have his gray head at my feet,
proposing marriage to me! And that