is duties did not allow him to give so
much time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly
have prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great
reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited
not only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness
which, born with some of God's creatures, is, if not "grace," at least a
manifestation of native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.

The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single
point. There was one subject on which no word ever passed between them.
The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle
to cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and
father, and no word ever passed between them implying a suspicion of the
loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother
only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, "I should think you were
in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter."

This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange
suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams
and reveries. The thought once admitted that another's life is becoming
superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul.
Woe to the man or woman whose days are passed in watching the hour-glass
through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a
skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with
those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly,
or some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an
idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.

It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to
some fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to
yield to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but
he did not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more
desperate sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of
emotional relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name
of religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on
the territory of legitimate instincts and affection