every
particular was Jonas to the young painter, the friend of her
childhood.

But Mehetabel knew that such thoughts could but breed mischief.
They were poison germs that would infect her own life, and make
her not only infinitely wretched but degrade her in her own eyes.
She fought against them. She beat them down as though she were
battling with serpents that rose up out of the dust to lash
themselves around her and sting her. The look at them had an
almost paralyzing effect. If she did not use great effort they
would fascinate her, and draw her on till they filled her whole
mind and lured her from thought to act.

She had not been instructed in much that was of spiritual advantage
when a child in the Sunday-school. The Rector, as has already been
intimated, had been an excellent and kindly man, who desired to
stand well with everybody, and who was always taking up one nostrum
after another as a panacea for every spiritual ill. And at the time
when Matabel was under instruction the nostrum was the physical
geography of the Holy Land. The only thing the parson did not teach
was a definite Christian belief, because he had entered into a
compromise with a couple of Dissenting farmers not to do so, and to
confine the instruction to such matters as could not be disputed.
Moreover, he was, himself, mentally averse to everything that
savored of dogma in religion. He would not give his parishioners
the Bread of Life, but would supply them with any amount of stones
geographically tabulated according to their strata.

However, Matabel had acquired a clear sense of right and wrong, at
a little dame's school she had attended, as also from Mrs. Verstage;
and now this definite knowledge of right and wrong stood her in
good stead. She saw that the harboring of such thoughts was wrong,
and she therefore resolutely resisted them. "He said," she sighed,
when the battle was over, "that he would follow me through life and
death, and finally drag me underground. But, can he be as bad as
his word?"

CHAPTER XXIX.

A HERALD OF STRIFE.

The winter passed without any change in the situation. Iver did not
come home for Christmas, although he heard that his mother was
failing in health and strength. There was much amusement in
Guildford, and he reasoned that it would be advantageous to his
business to take part in all the entertainments, and accept every
invitation made him to the house of a pupil. Thursley was not so
remote