le will be angry if he observes our absence."

"I will bear the brunt of his wrath; he will not devour me. I shall be
sorry to miss his pungent speech. I know it will be all sense for the
church, and all causticity for schism. He'll not forget the battle of
Royd Lane. I shall be sorry also to deprive you of Mr. Hall's sincere
friendly homily, with all its racy Yorkshireisms; but here I must stay.
The gray church and grayer tombs look divine with this crimson gleam on
them. Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before those
red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying
for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for
lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods. Caroline, I see her, and I
will tell you what she is like. She is like what Eve was when she and
Adam stood alone on earth."

"And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley."

"Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! I repeat. No, by the pure Mother of God,
she is not! Cary, we are alone; we may speak what we think. Milton was
great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw
heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and
Death their horrible offspring. Angels serried before him their
battalions; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his
blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered
their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and tarnished armies
passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the first woman;
but, Cary, he saw her not."

"You are bold to say so, Shirley."

"Not more bold than faithful. It was his cook that he saw; or it was
Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, in the heat of summer,
in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed
window, preparing a cold collation for the rectors--preserves and
'dulcet creams;' puzzled 'what choice to choose for delicacy best; what
order so contrived as not to mix tastes, not well-joined, inelegant, but
bring taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.'"

"All very well too, Shirley."

"I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans,
and that Eve was their mother; from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion,
Oceanus; she bore Prometheus----"

"Pagan that you are! what does that signify?"

"I say, there were giants on the earth in those days--giants that strove
to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with