omeless orphan, and sought to cultivate your mind and train your
heart. In the first you have done more than justice to my tuition and my
care. I am proud of the plant that I have reared. But how have you
repaid me? You have imbibed sentiments and opinions abhorrent to all
just and moral men. You have slighted my advice, and at times have even
threatened the adviser."

"If you refer to the difference in our faith," said Bernard, "you must
remember that it was from your teachings that I derived the warrant to
follow the dictates of my conscience and my reason. If they have led me
into error, you must charge it upon these monitors which God has given
me. You cannot censure me."

"I confess I am to blame," said the good old man, with a sigh. "But who
could have thought, that when, with my hard earnings, I had saved enough
to send you to France, in order to give you a more extensive
acquaintance with the world you were about to enter--who would have
thought that it would result in your imbibing such errors as these! Oh,
my son, what freedom of conscience is there in a faith like papacy,
which binds your reason to the will of another? And what purity can
there be in a religion which you dare not avow?"

"Naaman bowed in the house of Rimmon," returned Bernard, carelessly,
"and if the prophet forgave him for thus following the customs of his
nation, that he might retain a profitable and dignified position, I
surely may be forgiven, under a milder dispensation, for suppressing my
real sentiments in order to secure office and preferment."

"Alas!" murmured Hutchinson, bitterly. "Well, it is a sentiment worthy
of Edward's son. But go, my poor boy, proud in your reason, which but
leads you astray--wresting scripture in order to justify hypocrisy, and
profaning religion with vice. You shall not yet want my prayers that you
may be redeemed from error."

"Well, good night," said Bernard, as he opened the door. "But do me the
justice to say, that though I may be deceitful, I can never be
ungrateful, nor can I forget your kindness to a desolate orphan." And so
saying, he closed the door, and left the old chaplain to the solitude of
his own stricken heart.

CHAPTER XX.

"Oh, tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide."
_Henry VI._

Brightly shone the sun through the window of the Garter Inn, at which
Virginia Temple sat on the morning after the ball at Sir William
Berkeley's