'Mr. Pitt,' said Miss Betty, 'you are giving me no help at all.'

He brought himself and his attention round to her at once, and asked how he could be of service.

'Your mother,' began Miss Betty, stitching away, 'has given me a commission concerning you. She desires me to see to it that ennui does not creep upon you during your vacation in this unexciting place. How do I know but it is creeping upon you already? and you give me no chance to drive it away.'

Pitt laughed a little. 'I was never attacked by ennui in my life,' he said.

'So you do not want my services!'

'Not to fight an enemy that is nowhere in sight. Perhaps he is your enemy, and I might be helpful in another way.'

It occurred to him that he had been charged to make Miss Frere's sojourn in Seaforth pleasant; and some vague sense of what this mutual charge might mean dawned upon him, with a rising light of amusement.

'I don't know!' said the young lady. 'You did once propose a drive. If you would propose it again, perhaps I would go. We cannot help its being hot?'

So they went for a drive. The roads were capital, the evening was lovely, the horses went well, and the phaeton was comfortable; if that were not enough, it was all. Miss Frere bore it for a while patiently.

'Do you dislike talking?' she asked at length meekly, when a soft bit of road and the slow movement of the horses gave her a good opportunity.

'I? Not at all!' said Pitt, rousing himself as out of a muse.

'Then I wish you would talk. Mrs. Dallas desires that I should entertain you; and how am I to do that unless I know you better?'

'So you think people's characters come out in talking?'

'If not their characters, at least something of what is in their heads—what they know—and don't know; what they can talk about, in short.'

'I do not know anything—to talk about.'

'Oh, fie, Mr. Dallas! you who have been to Oxford and London. Tell me, what is London like? An overgrown New York, I suppose.'

'No, neither. "Overgrown" means grown beyond strength or usefulness. London is large, but not overgrown, in any sense.'

'Well, like New York, only larger?'

'No more than a mushroom is like a great old oak. London is like that; an old oak, gnarled and twisted and weather-worn, with plenty of hale life and young vigour springing out of its rugged old roots.'

'That sounds—poetical.'

'If you mean, not true, you are under a mistake.'

'Then it seems you know London?'

'I suppose I do; better than many of those who live in it. When I am there, Miss Frere, I am with an old uncle, who is an antiquary and an enthusiast on the subject of his native city. From the first it has been his pleasure to go with me all over London, and tell me the secrets of its old streets, and show me what was worth looking at. London was my picture-book, my theatre, where I saw tragedy and comedy together; my museum of antiquities. I never tire of it, and my Uncle Strahan is never tired of showing it to me.'

'Why, what is it to see?' asked Miss Frere, with some real curiosity.

'For one thing, it is an epitome of English history, strikingly illustrated.'

'Oh, you mean Westminster Abbey! Yes, I have heard of that, of course. But I should think that was not interminable.'

'I do not mean Westminster Abbey.'

'What then, please?'

'I cannot tell you here,' said Pitt smiling, as the horses, having found firm ground, set off again at a gay trot. 'Wait till we get home, and I will show you a map of London.'

The young lady, satisfied with having gained her object, waited very patiently, and told Mrs. Dallas on reaching home that the drive had been delightful.

Next day Pitt was as good as his word. He brought his map of London into the cool matted room where the ladies were sitting, rolled up a table, and spread the map out before Miss Frere. The young lady dropped her embroidery and gave her attention.

'What have you there, Pitt?' his mother inquired.

'London, mamma.'

'London?' Mrs. Dallas drew up her chair too, where she could look on; while Pitt briefly gave an explanation of the map; showed where was the 'City' and where the fashionable quarter.

'I suppose,' said Miss Frere, studying the map, 'the parts of London that delight you are over here?' indicating the West End.

'No,' returned Pitt, 'by no means. The City and the Strand are infinitely more interesting.'

'My dear,' said his mother, 'I do not see how that can be.'

'It is true, though, mother. All this,' drawing his finger round a certain portion of the map, 'is crowded with the witnesses of human life and history; full of remains that tell of the men of the past, and their doings, and their sufferings.'

Miss Frere's fine eyes were lifted to him in inquiry; meeting them, he smiled, and went on.

'I must explain. Where shall I begin? Suppose, for instance, we take our stand here at Whitehall. We are looking at the Banqueting House of the Palace, built by Inigo Jones for James I. The other buildings of the palace, wide and splendid as they were, have mostly perished. This stands yet. I need not tell you the thoughts that come up as we look at it.'

'Charles I was executed there, I know. What else?'

'There is a whole swarm of memories, and a whole crowd of images, belonging to the palace of which this was a part. Before the time you speak of, there was Cardinal Wolsey'—

'Oh, Wolsey! I remember.'

'His outrageous luxury and pomp of living, and his disgrace. Then comes Henry VIII., and Anne Boleyn, and their marriage; Henry's splendours, and his death. All that was here. In those days the buildings of Whitehall were very extensive, and they were further enlarged afterwards. Here Elizabeth held her court, and here she lay in state after death. James I comes next; he built the Banqueting House. And in his son's time, the royal magnificence displayed at Whitehall was incomparable. All the gaieties and splendours and luxury of living that then were possible, were known here. And here was the scaffold where he died. The next figure is Cromwell's.'

'Leave him out!' said Mrs. Dallas, with a sort of groan of impatience.

'What shall I do with the next following, mamma? That is Charles II.'

'He had a right there at least.'

'He abused it.'

'At least he was a king, and a gentleman.'

'If I could show you Whitehall as it was in his day, mother, I think you would not want to look long. But I shall not try. We will go on to Charing Cross. The old palace extended once nearly so far. Here is the place.' He pointed to a certain spot on the map.

'What is there now?' asked Betty.

'Not the old Cross. That is gone; but, of course, I cannot stand there without in thought going back to Edward I. and his queen. In its place is a brazen statue of Charles I. And in fact, when I stand there the winds seem to sweep down upon me from many a mountain peak of history. Edward and his rugged greatness, and Charles and his weak folly; and the Protectorate, and the Restoration. For here, where the statue stands, stood once the gallows where Harrison and his companions were executed, when "the king had his own again." Sometimes I can hardly see the present, when I am there, for looking at the past.'

'You are enthusiastic,' said Miss Frere. 'But I understand it. Yes, that is not like New York; not much!'

'What became of the Cross, Pitt?'

'Pulled down, mother—like everything else in its day.'

'Who pulled it down?'

'The Republicans.'

'The Republicans! Yes, it was like them!' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Rebellion, dissent, and a want of feeling for whatever is noble and refined, all go together. That was the Puritans!'

'Pretty strong!' said Pitt. 'And not quite fair either, is it? How much feeling for what is noble and refined was there in the court of the second Charles?—and how much of either, if you look below the surface, was in the policy or the character of the first Charles?'

'He did not destroy pictures and pull down statues,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'He was at least a gentleman. But the Puritans were a low set, always. I cannot forgive them for the work they did in England.'

'You may thank heaven for some of the work they did. But for them, you would not be here to-day in a land of freedom.'

'Too much freedom,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I believe it is good to have a king over a country.'

'Well, go on from Charing Cross, won't you,' said Miss Frere. 'I am interested. I never studied a map of London before. I am not sure I ever saw one.'

'I do not know which way to go,' said Pitt. 'Every step brings us to new associations; every street opens up a chapter of history. Here is Northumberland House; a grand old building, full of its records. Howards and Percys and Seymours have owned it and built it; and there General Monk planned the bringing back of the Stuarts. Going along the Strand, every step is full of interest. Just here used to be the palace of Sir Nicholas Baron and his son; then James the First's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, lived in it; and the beautiful water-gate is yet standing which Inigo Jones built for him. All the Strand was full of palaces which have passed away, leaving behind the names of their owners in the streets which remain or have been built since. Here Sir Walter Raleigh lived; here the Dudleys had their abode, and Lady Jane Grey was married; here was the house of Lord Burleigh. But let us go on to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. Here once stood a great Maypole, round which there used to be merry doings. The Puritans took that down too, mother.'

'What for?'

'They held it to be in some sort a relic of heathen manners. Then under Charles II. it was set up again. And here, once, four thousand children were gathered and sang a hymn, on some public occasion of triumph in Queen Anne's reign.'

'It is not there now?'

'Oh, no! It was given to Sir Isaac Newton, and made to subserve the uses of a telescope.'

'How do you know all these things, Mr. Pitt.'

'Every London antiquary knows them, I suppose. And I told you, I have an old uncle who is a great antiquary; London is his particular hobby.'

'He must have had an apt scholar, though.'

'Much liking makes good learning, I suppose,' said the young man. 'A little further on is the church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to attend divine service. About here stands Temple Bar.'

'Temple Bar!' said Miss Frere. 'I have heard of Temple Bar all my life, and never connected any clear idea with the name. What is Temple Bar?'

'It is not very much of a building. It is the barrier which marks the bound of the city of London.'

'Isn't it London on both sides of Temple Bar?'

'London, but not the City. The City proper begins here. On the west of this limit is Westminster.'

'There are ugly associations with Temple Bar, I know,' said Miss Frere.

'There are ugly associations with everything. Down here stood Essex House, where Essex defended himself, and from which he was carried off to the Tower. There, in Lincoln's Inn fields, Thomas Babington and his party died for high treason, and there Russell died. And just up here is Smithfield. It is all over, the record of violence, intolerance, and brutality. It meets you at every turn.'

'It is only what would be in any other place as old as London,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'In old times people were rough, of course, but they were rough everywhere.'

'I was thinking'— said Miss Frere. 'Mr. Dallas gives a somewhat singular justification of his liking for London.'

'Is it?' said Pitt. 'It would be singular if the violence were there now; but to read the record and look on the scene is interesting, and for me fascinating. The record is of other things too. See,—in this place Milton lived and wrote; here Franklin abode; here Charles Lamb; from an inn in this street Bishop Hooper went away to die. And so I might go on and on. At every step there is the memorial of some great man's life, or some noted man's death. And with all that, there are also the most exquisite bits of material antiquity. Old picturesque houses; old crypts of former churches, over which stands now a modern representative of the name; old monuments many; old doorways, and courts, and corners, and gateways. Come over to London, and I will take you down into the crypt of St. Paul's, and show you how history is presented to you there.'

'The crypt?' said Miss Frere, doubting somewhat of this invitation.

'Yes, the old monuments are in the crypt.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I do not understand how all these things you have been talking about should have so much charm for you. I should think the newer and handsomer parts of the city, the parks and the gardens, and the fine squares, would be a great deal more agreeable.'

'To live in, mother.'

'And don't you go to the British Museum, and to the Tower, and to Hyde Park?'

'I have been there hundreds of times.'

'And like these old corners still?'

'I am very fond of the Museum.'

'There is nothing like that is this country,' said Mrs. Dallas, with an accent of satisfaction.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

INTERPRETATIONS.

Miss Betty hereupon begged to be told more distinctly what was in the British Museum, that anybody should go there 'hundreds of times.' Pitt presently got warm in his subject, and talked long and well; as many people will do when they are full of their theme, even when they can talk upon nothing else. Pitt was not one of those people; he could talk well upon anything, and now he made himself certainly very entertaining. His mother thought so, who cared nothing for the British Museum except in so far that it was a great institution of an old country, which a young country could not rival. She listened to Pitt. Miss Betty gave him even more profound interest and unflagging attention; whether she too were not studying the speaker full as much as the things spoken, I will not say. They had a very pleasant morning of it; conversation diverging sometimes to Assyria and Egypt, and ancient civilizations and arts, and civilization in general. Mrs. Dallas gradually drew back from mingling in the talk, and watched, well pleased, to see how eager the two other speakers became, and how they were lost in their subject and in each other.

In the afternoon there was another drive, to which Pitt did not need to be stimulated; and all the evening the two young people were busy with something which engaged them both. Mrs. Dallas breathed freer.

'I think he is smitten,' she said privately to her husband. 'How could he help it? He has seen nobody else to be smitten with.'

But Betty Frere was not sure of any such thing; and the very fact of Pitt's disengagedness made him more ensnaring to her. There was nobody else in the village to divert his attention, and the two young people were thrown very much together. They went driving, they rode, and they talked, continually. The map of London was often out, and Mrs. Dallas saw the two heads bent over it, and interested faces looking into each other; and she thought things were going on very fairly. If only the vacation were not so short! For only a little time more, and Pitt must be back at his chambers in London. The mother sighed to herself. She was paying rather a heavy price to keep her son from Dissenters!

Betty Frere too remembered that the vacation was coming to an end, and drew her breath rather short. She was depending on Pitt too much for her amusement, she told herself, and to be sure there were other young men in the world that could talk; but she felt a sort of disgust at the thought of them all. They were not near so interesting. They all flattered her, and some of them were supposed to be brilliant; but Betty turned from the thought of them to the one whose lips never condescended to say pretty things, nor made any effort to say witty things. They behaved towards her with a sort of obsequious reverence, which was the fashion of that day much more than of this; and Betty liked far better a manner which never made pretence of anything, was thoroughly natural and perfectly well-bred, but which frankly paid more honour to his mother than to herself. She admired Pitt's behaviour to his mother. Even to his mother it had less formality than was the custom of the day; while it gave her every delicate little attention and every possible graceful observance. The young beauty had sense enough to see that this promised more for Pitt's future wife than any amount of civil subserviency to herself. Perhaps there is not a quality which women value more in a man, or miss more sorely, than what we express by the term manliness. And she saw that Pitt, while he was enthusiastic and eager, and what she called fanciful, always was true, honest, and firm in what he thought right. From that no fancy carried him away.

And Miss Betty found the days pass with almost as much charm as fleetness. How fleet they were she did not bear to think. She found herself recognising Pitt's step, distinguishing his voice in the distance, and watching for the one and the other. Why not? He was so pleasant as a companion. But she found herself also starting when he appeared suddenly, thrilled at the unexpected sound of his voice, and conscious of quickened pulses when he came into the room. Betty did not like these signs in herself; at the same time, that which had wrought the spell continued to work, and the spell was not broken. In justice to the young lady, I must say that there was not the slightest outward token of it. Betty was as utterly calm and careless in her manner as Pitt himself; so that even Mrs. Dallas—and a woman in those matters sees far—could not tell whether either or both of the young people had a liking for the other more than the social good-fellowship which was frank and apparent. It might be, and she confessed also to herself that it might not be.

'You must give that fellow time,' said her husband. Which Mrs. Dallas knew, if she had not been so much in a hurry.

'If he met those Gainsboroughs by chance, I would not answer for anything,' she said.

'How should he meet them? They are probably as poor as rats, and have drawn into some corner, out of the way. He will never see them.'

'Pitt is so persistent!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily.

'He'll be back in England in a few weeks.'

'But when he comes again!'

'He shall not come again. We will go over to see him ourselves next year.'

'That is a very good thought,' said Mrs. Dallas.

And, comforted by this thought and the plans she presently began to weave in with it, she looked now with much more equanimity than Betty herself towards the end of Pitt's visit. Mrs. Dallas, however, was not to get off without another shock to her nerves.

It was early in September, and the weather of that sultry, hot, and moist character which we have learned to look for in connection with the first half of that month. Miss Frere's embroidery went languidly; possibly there might have been more reasons than one for the slow and spiritless movement of her fingers, which was quite contrary to their normal habit. Mrs. Dallas, sitting at a little distance on the verandah, was near enough to hear and observe what went on when Pitt came upon the scene, and far enough to be separated from the conversation unless she chose to mix in it. By and by he came, looking thoughtful, as Betty saw, though she hardly seemed to notice his approach. There was no token in her quiet manner of the quickened pulses of which she was immediately conscious. Something like a tremulous thrill ran through her nerves; it vexed her to be so little mistress of them, yet the pleasure of the thrill at the moment was more than the pain. Pitt threw himself into a chair near her, and for a few moments watched the play of her needle. Betty's eyelashes never stirred. But the silence lasted too long. Nerves would not bear it.

'What can you find to do in this weather, Mr. Pitt?' she asked languidly.

'It is good weather,' he answered absently. 'Do you ever read the Bible?'

Miss Betty's fine eyes were lifted now with an expression of some amusement. They were very fine eyes; Mrs. Dallas thought they could not fail of their effect.

'The Bible?' she repeated. 'I read the lessons in the Prayer-book; that is the same.'

'Is it the same? Is the whole Bible contained in the lessons?'

'I don't know, I am sure,' she answered doubtfully. 'I think so. There is a great deal of it.'

'But you read it piecemeal so.'

'You must read it piecemeal any way,' returned the young lady. 'You can read only a little each day; a portion.'

'You could read consecutively, though, or you could choose for yourself.'

'I like to have the choice made for me. It saves time; and then one is sure one has got hold of the right portion, you know. I like the lessons.'

'And then,' remarked Mrs. Dallas, 'you know other people and your friends are reading that same portion at the same time, and the feeling is very sacred and sweet.'

'But if the Bible was intended to be read in such a way, how comes it that we have no instruction to that end?'

'Instruction was given,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'The Church has ordered it.'

'The Church' said Pitt thoughtfully. 'Who is the Church?'

'Why, my dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'don't ask such questions. You know as well as I do.'

'As I understand it, mother, what you mean is simply a body of Christians who lived some time ago.'

'Yes. Well, what then?'

'I do not comprehend how they should know what you and I want to read to-day. I am not talking of Church services. I am talking of private reading.'

'But it is pleasant and convenient,' said Betty.

'May be very inappropriate.'

'Pitt,' said his mother, 'I wish you would not talk so! It is really very wrong. This comes of your way of questioning and reasoning about everything. What we have to do with the Church is to obey.'

'And that is what we have to do with the Bible, isn't it?' he said gravely.

'Undoubtedly.'

'Well, mother, I am not talking to you; I am attacking Miss Frere. I can talk to her on even terms. Miss Frere, I want to know what you understand by obeying, when we are speaking of the demands of the Bible?'

'Obeying? I understand just what I mean by it anywhere.'

'Obeying what?'

'Why, obeying God, of course.'

'Of course! But how do we know what His commands are?'

'By the words—how else?' she asked, looking at him. He was in earnest, for some reason, she saw, and she forbore from the light words with which at another time she would have given a turn to the subject.

'Then you think, distinctly, that we ought to obey the words of the Bible?'

'Ye-s,' she said, wondering what was coming.

'All the words?'

'Yes, I suppose so. All the words, according to their real meaning.'

'How are we to know what that is?'

'I suppose—the Church tells us.'

'Where?'

'I do not know—in books, I suppose.'

'What books? But we are going a little wild. May I bring you an instance or two? I am talking in earnest, and mean it earnestly.'

'Do you ever do anything in any other way?' asked the young lady, with a charming air of fine raillery and recognition blended. 'Certainly; I am in earnest too.'

Pitt went away and returned with a book in his hand.

'What have you there? the Prayer-book?' his mother asked, with a doubtful expression.

'No, mamma; I like to go to the Fountain-head of authority as well as of learning.'

'The Fountain-head!' exclaimed Mrs. Dallas, in indignant protest; and then she remembered her wisdom, and said no more. It cost her an effort; however, she knew that for her to set up a defence of either Church or Prayer-book just then would not be wise, and that she had better leave the matter in Betty's hands. She looked at Betty anxiously. The young lady's face showed her cool and collected, not likely to be carried away by any stream of enthusiasm or overborne by influence. It was, in fact, more cool than she felt. She liked to get into a good talk with Pitt upon any subject, and so far was content; at the same time she would rather have chosen any other than this, and was a little afraid whereto it might lead. Religion had not been precisely her principal study. True, it had not been his principal study either; but Betty discerned a difference in their modes of approaching it. She attributed that to the Puritan or dissenting influences which had at some time got hold of him. To thwart those would at any rate be a good work, and she prepared herself accordingly.

Pitt opened his book and turned over a few leaves.

'To begin with,' he said, 'you admit that whatever this book commands we are bound to obey?'

'Provided we understand it,' his opponent put in.

'Provided we understand it, of course. A command not understood is hardly a command. Now here is a word which has struck me, and I would like to know how it strikes you.'

He turned to the familiar twenty-fifth of Matthew and read the central portion, the parable of the talents. He read like an interested man, and perhaps it was owing to a slight unconscious intonation here and there that Pitt's two hearers listened as if the words were strangely new to them. They had never heard them sound just so. Yet the reading was not dramatic at all; it was only a perfectly natural and feeling deliverance. But feeling reaches feeling, as we all know. The reading ceased, nobody spoke for several minutes.

'What does it mean?' asked Pitt.

'My dear,' said his mother, 'can there be a question what it means? The words are perfectly simple, it seems to me.'

'Mamma, I am not talking to you. You may sit as judge and arbiter; but it is Miss Frere and I who are disputing. She will have the goodness to answer.'

'I do not know what to answer,' said the young lady. 'Are not the words, as Mrs. Dallas says, perfectly plain?'

'Then surely it cannot be difficult to say what the teaching of them is?'

If it was not difficult, the continued silence of the lady was remarkable. She made no further answer.

'Are they so plain? I have been puzzling over them. I will divide the question, and perhaps we can get at the conclusion better so. In the first place, who are these "servants" spoken of?'

'Everybody, I suppose. You have the advantage of me, Mr. Dallas; I have not been studying the passage.'

'Yet you admit that we are bound to obey it.'

'Yes,' she said doubtfully. 'Obey what?'

'That is precisely what I want to find out. Now the servants; they cannot mean everybody, for it says, he "called his own servants;" the Greek is "bond-servants."'

'His servants would be His Church then.'

'His own people. "He delivered unto them His goods." What are the goods he delivered to them? Some had more, some had less; all had a share and a charge. What are these goods?'

'I don't know,' said Miss Frere, looking at him.

'What were they to do with these goods?'

'Trade with them, it seems.'

'In Luke the command runs so: "Trade till I come." Trading is a process by which the goods or the money concerned are multiplied. What are the goods given to you and me?—to bring the question down into the practical. It must be something with which we may increase the wealth of Him who has entrusted it to us.'

'Pitt, that is a very strange way of speaking,' said his mother.

'I am talking to Miss Frere, mamma. You have only to hear and judge between us. Miss Frere, the question comes to you.'

'I should say it is not possible to increase "His wealth."'

'That is not my putting of the case, remember. And also, every enlargement of His dominion in this world, every addition made to the number of His subjects, may be fairly spoken of so. The question stands, What are the goods? That is, if you like to go into it. I am not catechizing you,' said Pitt, half laughing.

'I do not dislike to be catechized,' said Miss Frere slowly. By you, was the mental addition. 'But I never had such a question put to me before, and I am not ready with an answer.'

'I never heard the question discussed either,' said Pitt. 'But I was reading this passage yesterday, and could not help starting it. The "goods" must be, I think, all those gifts or powers by means of which we can work for God, and so work as to enlarge His kingdom. Now, what are they?'

'Of course we can pay money,' said the young lady, looking a good deal mystified. 'We can pay money to support ministers, if that is what you mean.'

'So much is patent enough. Is money the only thing?'

Miss Frere looked bewildered, Mrs. Dallas impatient. She restrained herself, however, and waited. Pitt smiled.

'We pay money to support ministers and teachers. What do the ministers work with? what do they trade with?'

'The truth, I suppose.'

'And how do they make the truth known? By their lips, and by their lives; the power of the word, with the power of personal influence.'

'Yes,' said Miss Frere; 'of course.'

'Then the goods, or talents, so far as they are commonly possessed, and so far as we have discovered, are three: property, speech, and personal example. But the two last are entrusted to you and me, are they not, as well as the former?'

The girl looked at him now with big eyes, in which no shadow of self-consciousness was any more lurking. Eyes that were bewildered, astonished, inquiring, and also disturbed. 'What do you mean?' she said helplessly.

'It comes to this,' said Pitt. 'If we are ready to obey the Bible, we shall use not only our money, but our tongues and ourselves to do the work which—you know—the Lord left to His disciples to do; make disciples of every creature. It will be our one business.'

'How do you mean, our one business?'

'That to which we make all others subservient.'

'Subservient! Yes,' said Miss Frere. 'Subservient in a way; but that does not mean that we should give up everything else for it.'

Pitt was silent.

'My dear boy,' said his mother anxiously, 'it seems to me you are straining things quite beyond what is intended. We are not all meant to be clergymen, are we?'

'That is not the point, mamma. The point is, what work is given us?'

'That work you speak of is clergymen's work.'

'Mamma, what is the command?'

'But that does not mean everybody.'

'Where is the excepting clause?'

'But, my dear, what would become of Society?'

'We may leave that. We are talking of obeying the Bible. I have given you one instance. Now I will give you another. It is written over here,' and he turned a few leaves,—'it is another word of Christ to those whom He was teaching,—"If any man serve me, let him follow me." Now here is a plain command; but what is it to follow Christ?'

'To imitate him, I suppose,' said Miss Frere, to whom he looked.

'In what?'

The young lady looked at him in silence, and then said, 'Why, we all know what it means when we say that such a person or such a thing is Christlike. Loving, charitable, kind'—

'But to follow Him,—that is something positive and active. Literal following a person is to go where he has gone, through all the paths and to all the places. In the spiritual following, which is intended here,—what is it? It is to do as He did, is it not? To have His aims and purposes and views in life, and to carry them out logically.'

'What do you mean by "logically"?'

'According to their due and proper sequences.'

'Well, what are you driving at?' asked Miss Frere a little worriedly.

'I will tell you. But I do not mean to drive you,' he said, again with a little laugh, as of self-recollection. 'Tell me to stop, if you are tired of the subject.'

'I am not in the least tired; how could you think it? It always delights me when people talk logically. I do not very often hear it. But I never heard of logical religion before.'

'True religion must be logical, must it not?'

'I thought religion was rather a matter of feeling.'

'I believe I used to think so.'

'And pray, what is it, then, Pitt?' his mother asked.

'Look here, mamma. "If any man will serve me, let him follow me."'

'Well, what do you understand by that, Pitt? You are going too fast for me. I thought the love of God was the whole of religion.'

'But here is the "following," mamma.'

'What sort of following?'

'That is what I am asking. As it cannot be in bodily, so it must be in mental footsteps.'

'I do not understand you,' said his mother, with an air both vexed and anxious; while Miss Frere had now let her embroidery fall, and was giving her best consideration to the subject and the speaker. She was a little annoyed too, but she was more interested. This was a different sort of conversation from any she had been accustomed to hear, and Pitt was a different sort of speaker. He was not talking to kill time, or to please her; he was—most wonderful and rare!—in earnest; and that not in any matter that involved material interests. She had seen people in earnest before on matters of speculation and philosophy, often on stocks and schemes for making money, in earnest violently on questions of party politics; but in earnest for the truth's sake, never, in all her life. It was a new experience, and Pitt was a novel kind of person; manly, straightforward, honest; quite a person to be admired, to be respected, to be— Where were her thoughts running?

He had sat silent a moment, after his mother's last remark; gravely thinking. Betty brought him back to the point.

'You will tell us what you think "following" means?' she said gently.

'I will tell you,' he said, smiling. 'I am not supposed to be speaking to mamma. If you will look at the way Christ went, you will see what following Him must be. In the first place, Self was nowhere.'

'Yes,' said Miss Frere.

'Who is ready to follow Him in that?'

'But, my dear boy!' cried Mrs. Dallas. 'We are human creatures; we cannot help thinking of ourselves; we are meant to think of ourselves. Everybody must think of self; or the world would not hold together.'

'I am speaking to Miss Frere,' he said pleasantly.

'I confess I think so too, Mr. Dallas. Of course, we ought not to be selfish; that means, I suppose, to think of self unduly; but where would the world be, if everybody, as you say, put self nowhere?'

'I will go on to another point. Christ went about doing good. It was the one business of His life. Whenever and wherever He went among men, He went to heal, to help, to teach, or to warn. Even when He was resting among friends in the little household at Bethany, He was teaching, and one of the household at least sat at His feet to listen.'

'Yes, and left her sister to do all the work,' remarked Mrs. Dallas.

'The Lord said she had done right, mamma.'

There ensued a curious silence. The two ladies sat looking at Pitt, each apparently possessed by a kind of troubled dismay; neither ready with an answer. The pause lasted till both of them felt what it implied, and both began to speak at once.

'But, my son'—

'But, Mr. Dallas!'—

'Miss Frere, mamma. Let her speak.' And turning to the young lady with a slight bow, he intimated his willingness to hear her. Miss Frere was nevertheless not very ready.

'Mr. Dallas, do I understand you? Can it be that you mean—I do not know how to put it,—do you mean that you think that everybody, that all of us, and each of us, ought to devote his life to helping and teaching?'

'It can be of no consequence what I think,' he said. 'The question is simply, what is "following Christ"?'

'Being His disciple, I should say.'

'What is that?' he replied quickly. 'I have been studying that very point; and do you know it is said here, and it was said then, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple"?'

'But what do you mean, Pitt?' his mother asked in indignant consternation.

'What did the Lord mean, mother?' he returned very gravely.

'Are we all heathen, then?' she went on with heat. 'For I never saw anybody yet in my life that took such a view of religion as you are taking.'

'Do we know exactly Mr. Pitt's view?' here put in the other lady. 'I confess I do not. I wish he would say.'

'I have been studying it,' said Pitt, with an earnest gravity of manner which gave his mother yet more trouble than his words. 'I have gone to the Greek for it; and there the word rendered "forsake" is one that means to "take leave of"—"bid farewell." And if we go to history for the explanation, we do find that that was the attitude of mind which those must needs assume in that day who were disposed to follow Christ. The chances were that they would be called upon to give up all—even life—as the cost of their following. They would begin by a secret taking leave, don't you see?'

'But the times are not such now,' Miss Frere ventured.

Pitt did not answer. He sat looking at the open page of his Bible, evidently at work with the problem suggested there. The two women looked at him; and his mother got rid as unobtrusively as possible of a vexed and hot tear that would come.

'Mr. Dallas,' Miss Frere urged again, 'these are not times of persecution any more. We can be Christians—disciples—and retain all our friends and possessions; can we not?'

'Can we without "taking leave" of them?'

'Certainly. I think so.'

'I do not see it!' he said, after another pause. 'Do you think anybody will be content to put self nowhere, as Christ did, giving up his whole life and strength—and means—to the help and service of his fellow men, unless he has come to that mental attitude we were speaking of? No, it seems to me, and the more I think of it the more it seems to me, that to follow Christ means to give up seeking honour or riches or pleasure, except so far as they may be sought and used in His service. I mean for His service. All I read in the Bible is in harmony with that view.'

'But how comes it then that nobody takes it,' said Miss Frere uneasily.

'I suppose,' said Pitt slowly, 'for the same reason that has kept me for years from accepting it;—because it was so difficult.'

'But religion cannot be a difficult thing, my dear son,' said Mrs. Dallas.

He looked up at her and smiled, an affectionate, very expressive, wistful smile.

'Can it not, mother? What mean Christ's words here,—"Whosoever doth not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple"? The cross meant shame, torture, and death, in those days; and I think in a modified way, it means the same thing now. It means something.'

'But Mr. Pitt, you do not answer my argument,' Miss Frere repeated. 'If this view is correct, how comes it that nobody takes it but you?'

'Your argument is where the dew is after a hot sun,—nowhere. Instead of nobody taking this view, it has been held by hundreds of thousands, who, like the first disciples, have forsaken all and followed Him. Rather than be false to it they have endured the loss of all things, they have given up father and mother, they have borne torture and faced the lions. In later days, they have been chased and worried from hiding-place to hiding-place, they have been cut down by the sword, buried alive, thrown from the tops of rocks, and burned at the stake. And in peacefuller times they have left their homes and countries and gone to the ends of the earth to tell the gospel. They have done what was given them to do, without regarding the cost of it.'

'Then you think all the people who fill our churches are no Christians!'

'I say nothing about the people who fill our churches.'

Pitt rose here.

'But, Mr. Dallas, how can all the world be so mistaken? Our clergymen, our bishops, do not preach such doctrine as you do, if I understand you.'

'That has been a great puzzle to me,' he said.

'Is it not enough to make you doubt?'

'Can I question the words I have read to you?'

'No, but perhaps your interpretation of them.'

'When you have got down to the simplest possible English, there is no room that I see for interpretation. "Follow me" can mean nothing but "follow me;" and "forsaking all" is not a doubtful expression.'

The discussion would probably have gone on still further, but the elder Dallas's step was heard in the house, and Pitt went away with his book.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

A STAND.

Mrs. Dallas was very deeply disturbed. She saw in these strange views of Pitt's all sorts of possible dangers to what she had hoped would be his future career in life. Even granting that they were a youthful folly and would pass away, how soon would they pass away? and in the meantime what chances Pitt might lose, what time might be wasted, what fatal damage his prospects might suffer! And Pitt held a thing so fast when he had once taken it up. Almost her only hope lay in Betty's influence.

Betty herself was disturbed, much more than she cared to have known. If this fascination got hold of Pitt, she knew very well he would, for the time at least, be open to no other. Her ordinary power would be gone; he would see in her nothing but a talking machine with whom he could discuss things. It was not speculation merely that busied his thoughts now, she could see; not mere philosophy, or study of human nature; Pitt was carrying all these Bible words in upon himself, comparing them with himself, and working away at the discrepancy. Something that he called conscience was engaged, and restless. Betty saw that there was but one thing left for her to do. Diversion was not possible; she could not hope to turn Pitt aside from his quest after truth; she must seem to take part in it, and so gain her advantage from what threatened to be her discomfiture.

The result of all which was, that after this there came to be a great deal of talk between the two upon Bible subjects, intermingled with not a little reading aloud from the Bible itself. This was at Betty's instance, rather than Pitt's. When she could she got him out for a walk or a drive; in the house (and truly, often out of the house too) she threw herself with great apparent interest into the study of the questions that had been started, along with others collateral, and desired to learn and desired to discuss all that could be known about them. So there were, as I said, continual Bible readings, mingled occasionally with references to some old commentary; and Betty and Pitt sat very near together, looking over the same page; and remained long in talk, looking eagerly into one another's eyes. Mrs. Dallas was not satisfied.

She came upon Betty one day in the verandah, just after Pitt had left her. The young lady was sitting with her hand between the leaves of a Bible, and a disturbed, far-away look in her eyes, which might have been the questioning of a troubled conscience, or—of a very different feeling. She roused up as Mrs. Dallas came to her, and put on a somewhat wan smile.

'Where is Pitt?'

'Going to ride somewhere, I believe.'

'What have you got there? the Bible again? I don't believe in all this Bible reading! Can't you get him off it?'

'It is the only thing to do now.'

'But cannot you get him off it?'

'Not immediately. Mr. Dallas takes a fancy hard.'

'So unlike him!' the mother went on. 'So unlike all he used to be. He always took things "hard," as you say; but then it used to be science and study of history, and collecting of natural curiosities, and drawing. Have you seen any of Pitt's drawings? He has a genius for that. Indeed, I think he has a genius for everything,' Mrs. Dallas said with a sigh; 'and he used to be keen for distinguishing himself, and he did distinguish himself everywhere, always; here at school and at college, and then at Oxford. My dear, he distinguished himself at Oxford. He was always a good boy, but not in the least foolish, or superstitious, or the least inclined to be fanatical. And now, as far as I can make out, he is for giving up everything!'

'He does nothing by halves.'

'No; but it is very hard, now when he is just reading law and getting ready to take his place in the world—and he would take no mean place in the world, Betty—it is hard! Why, he talks as if he would throw everything up. I never would have thought it of Pitt, of all people. It is due, I am convinced, to the influence of those dissenting friends of his!'

'Who are they?' Miss Betty asked curiously.

'You have heard the name,' said Mrs. Dallas, lowering her voice, though Pitt was not within hearing. 'They used to live here. It was a Colonel Gainsborough—English, but of a dissenting persuasion. That kind of thing seems to be infectious.'

'He must have been a remarkable man, if his influence could begin so early and last so long.'

'Well, it was not just that only. There was a daughter'—

'And a love affair?' asked Miss Betty, with a slight laugh which covered a sudden down-sinking of her heart.

'Oh dear no! she was a child; there was no thought of such a thing. But Pitt was fond of her, and used to go roaming about the fields with her after flowers. My son is a botanist; I don't know if you have found it out.'

'And those were the people he went to New York to seek?'

'Yes, and could not find—most happily.'

Miss Betty mused. Certainly Pitt was 'persistent.' And now he had got this religious idea in his head, would there be any managing it, or him? It did not frighten Miss Betty, so far as the religious idea itself was concerned; she reflected sagely that a man might be worse things than philanthropic, or even than pious. She had seen wives made unhappy by neglect, and others made miserable by the dissipated habits or the ungoverned tempers of their husbands; a man need not be unendurable because he was true and thoughtful and conscientious, or even devout. She could bear that, quite easily; the only thing was, that in thoughts which possessed Pitt lately he had passed out of her influence; beyond her reach. All she could do was to follow him into this new and very unwonted sphere, and seem to be as earnest as he was. He met her, he reasoned with her, he read to her, but Betty did not feel sure that she got any nearer to him, nevertheless. She was shrewd enough to divine the reason.

'Mr. Pitt,' she said frankly to him one day, when the talk had been eager in the same line it had taken that first day on the verandah, and both parties had held the same respective positions with regard to each other,—'Mr. Pitt, are you fighting me, or yourself?'

He paused and looked at her, and half laughed.

'You are right,' said he. And then he went off, and for the present that was all Miss Betty gained by her motion.

Nobody saw much of Pitt during the rest of the day. The next morning, after breakfast, he came out to the two ladies where as usual they were sitting at work. It was another September day of sultry heat, yet the verandah was also in the morning a pleasant place, sweet with the honeysuckle fragrance still lingering, and traversed by a faint intermittent breeze. Both ladies raised their heads to look at the young man as he came towards them, and then, struck by something in his face, could not take their eyes away. He came straight to his mother and stood there in front of her, looking down and meeting her look; Miss Frere could not see how, but evidently it troubled Mrs. Dallas.

'What is it now, Pitt?' she asked.

'I have come to tell you, mother. I have come to tell you that I have given up fighting.'

'Fighting!?'

'Yes. The battle is won, and I have lost, and gained. I have given up fighting, mother, and I am Christ's free man.'

'What?' exclaimed Mrs. Dallas bewilderedly.

'It is true, mother. I am Christ's servant. The things are the same. How should I not be the servant, the bond-servant, of Him who has made a free man of me?'

His tone was not excited; it was quiet and sweet; but Mrs. Dallas was excited.

'A free man? My boy, what are you saying? Were you not always free?'

'No, mother. I was in such bonds, that I have been struggling for years to do what was right—what I knew was right—and was unable.'

'To do what was right? My boy, how you talk! You always did what was right.'

'I was never Christ's servant, mamma.'

'What delusion is this!' cried Mrs. Dallas. 'My son, what do you mean? You were baptized, you were confirmed, you were everything that you ought to be. You cannot be better than you have always been.'

He smiled, stooped down and kissed her troubled face.

'I was never Christ's servant before,' he repeated. 'But I am His servant now at last, all there is of me. I wanted you to know at once, and Miss Frere, I wanted her to know it. She asked me yesterday whom I was fighting? and I saw directly that I was fighting a won battle; that my reason and conscience were entirely vanquished, and that the only thing that held out was my will. I have given that up, and now I am the Lord's servant.'

'You were His servant before.'

'Never, in any true sense.'

'My dear, what difference?' asked Mrs. Dallas helplessly.

'It was nominal merely.'

'And now?'

'Now it is not nominal; it is real. I have come to know and love my Master. I am His for life and death; and now His commands seem the pleasantest things in the world to me.'

'But you obeyed them always?'

'No, mamma, I did not. I obeyed nothing, in the last resort, but my own supreme will.'

'But, Pitt, you say you have come to know; what time has there been for any such change?'

'Not much time,' he replied; 'and I cannot tell how it is; but it seemed as if, so soon as I had given up the struggle and yielded, scales fell from my eyes. I cannot tell how it was; but all at once I seemed to see the beauty of Christ, which I never saw before; and, mamma, the sight has filled me with joy. Nothing now to my mind is more reasonable than His demands, or more delightful than yielding obedience to them.'

'Demands? what demands?' said Mrs. Dallas.

Her son repeated the words with which the twelfth chapter of Romans begins.

'"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service; and be not conformed to this world."'

'But, my dear, that means'—

'It means all.'

'How all?'

'There is nothing more left to give, when this sacrifice is presented. It covers the whole ground. The sacrifice is a living sacrifice, but it gives all to God as entirely as the offering that imaged it went up in smoke and flame.'

'What sacrifice imaged it?'

'The burnt-sacrifice of old. That always meant consecration.'

'How do you know? You are not a clergyman.'

Pitt smiled again, less brightly. 'True, mother, but I have been studying all this for years, in the Bible and in the words of others who were clergymen; and now it is all plain before me. It became so as soon as I was willing to obey it.'

'And what are you going to do?'

'Do? I cannot say yet. I am a soldier but just enlisted, and do not know where my orders will place me or what work they will give me. Only I have enlisted; and that is what I wanted you to know at once. Mother, it is a great honour to be a soldier of Christ.'

'I should think,—if I did not see you and hear your voice,—I should certainly think I heard a Methodist talking. I suppose that is the way they do.'

'Did you ever hear one talk, mother?'

'No, and do not want to hear one, even if it were my own son!' she answered angrily.

'But in all that I have been saying, if they say it too, the Methodists are right, mother. A redeemed sinner is one bought with a price, and thenceforth neither his spirit nor his body can be his own. And his happiness is not to be his own.'

Mrs. Dallas was violently moved, yet she had much self-command and habitual dignity of manner, and would not break down now. More pitiful than tears was the haughty gesture of her head as she turned it aside to hide the quivering lips. And more tender than words was the air with which her son presently stooped and took her hand.

'Mother!' he said gently and tenderly.

'Pitt, I never would have believed this of you!' she said with bitter emphasis.

'You never could have believed anything so good of me.'

'What are you going to do?' she repeated vehemently. 'What does all this amount to? or is it anything but dissenting rant?'

'Anything but that,' he answered gravely. 'Mother, do you remember the words,—"No man when he hath lighted a lamp covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that they which enter in may see the light"? Every Christian is such a lighted lamp, intended for some special place and use. My special use and place I do not yet know; but this I know plainly, that my work in the world, one way or another, must be the Lord's work. For that I live henceforth.'

'You will go into the Church?' cried his mother.

'Not necessarily.'

'You will give up reading law?'

'No, I think not. At present it seems to me I had better finish what I have begun. But if I do, mother, my law will be only one of the means I have to work with for that one end.'

'And I suppose your money would be another?'

'Undoubtedly.'

'What has money to do with teaching people?' Miss Frere asked. It was the first word she had spoken; she spoke it seriously, not mockingly. The question brought his eyes round to her.

'Do you ask that?' said he. 'Every unreasoning, ignorant creature of humanity understands it. The love that would win them for heaven would also help them on earth; and if they do not see the one thing, they do not believe in the other.'

'Then— But— What do you propose?'

'It is simple enough,' he said.

'It is too simple for Betty and me,' said his mother. 'I would be obliged to you, Pitt, to answer her.'

The young man's countenance changed; a shadow fell over it which raised Miss Frere's sympathy. He went into the house, however, for a Bible, and coming back with it sat down and read quietly and steadfastly the beautiful words in Isaiah:

'"To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke. ... To deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house; when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh."'

'It would take a good deal of money, certainly,' said Miss Frere, 'to do all that; indeed, I hardly think all the fortunes in the world would be sufficient.'

Pitt made no answer. He sat looking down at the page from which he had been reading.

'Nobody is required to do more than his part of the work,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'If Pitt will be contented with that'—

'What is my part of it, mother?'

'Why, your share; what you can do properly and comfortably, without any fanaticism of sacrifice.'

'Must I not do all I can?'

'No, not all you can. You could spend your whole fortune in it.'

'I was thinking, easily,' observed Miss Frere.

'What is the Bible rule? "When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him"—"that ye break every yoke." And, "he that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise."'

'You can find Scripture to quote for everything, said Mrs. Dallas, rising in anger; 'that is the way Methodists and fanatics always do, as I have heard. But I can tell you one thing, Pitt, which you may not have taken into account; if you persist in this foolishness, your father, I know, will take care that the fortune you have to throw away shall not be large!'

With these words she swept into the house. The two left behind were for some moments very still. Pitt had drooped his head a little, and rested his brow in his hand; Miss Betty watched him. Her dismay and dislike of Pitt's disclosures were scarcely less than his mother's, but different. Disappointed pride was not here in question. That he should give up a splendid and opulent career did not much trouble her. In the first place, he might modify his present views; in the second place, if he did not, if he lived up to his principles, there was something in her which half recognised the beauty and dignity and truth of such a life. But in either case, alas, alas! how far was he drifted away out of her sphere, and beyond her reach? For the present, at least, his mind was utterly taken up by this one great subject; there was no room in it left for light things; love skirmishes could not be carried on over the ground he now occupied; he was wholly absorbed in his new decisions and experiences, and likely to be engaged with the consequences of them. Betty was sorry for him just now, for she saw that he felt pain; and at the same time she admired him more than ever. His face was more sweet, she thought, and yet more strong, than she had ever seen it; his manner to his mother was perfect. So had not been her manner towards him. He had been gentle, steadfast, and true, manly and tender. 'Happy will be the woman that will share his life, whatever it be!' thought Betty, with some constriction of heart; but to bring herself into that favoured place she saw little chance now. She longed to say a word of some sort that might sound like sympathy or intelligence; but she could not find it, and wisely held her peace.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LIFE PLANS.

Happily or unhappily,—it was as people looked at it,—Pitt's free days in America were drawing to a close. There were few still remaining to him before he must leave Seaforth and home, and go back to his reading law in the Temple. In those days there was a little more discussion of his new views and their consequences between him and his mother, but not much; and none at all between him and his father.

'Pitt is not a fool,' he had said, when Mrs. Dallas, in her distress, confided to him Pitt's declaration; 'I can trust him not to make an ass of himself; and so can you, wife.'

'But he is very strong when he takes a thing in his head; always was.'

'This thing will get out of his head again, you will see.'

'I do not believe it. It isn't his way.'

'One thing is certain,—I shall never give my money to a fool to make ducks and drakes with; and you may hint as much to him.'

'It would be very unwise policy,' said Mrs. Dallas thoughtfully.

'Then let it alone. I have no idea there is any need. You may depend upon it, London and law will scare all this nonsense away, fast enough.'

Mrs. Dallas felt no comforting assurance of the kind. She watched her son during the remaining days of his presence with them—watched him incessantly; so did Betty Frere, and so, in truth, secretly, did his father. Pitt was rather more quiet than usual; there was not much other change to be observed in him, or so Mrs. Dallas flattered herself.

'I see a difference,' said Miss Frere, to whom she communicated this opinion.

'What is it?' asked the mother hastily. For she had seen it too.

'It is not just easy to put it in words; but I see it. Mrs. Dallas, there is a wonderful rest come into his face.'

'Rest?' said the other. 'Pitt was never restless, in a bad sense; there was no keep still to him; but that is not what you mean.'

'That is not what I mean. I never in my life saw anybody look so happy.'

'Can't you do something with him?'

'He gives me no chance.'

It may seem strange that a good mother should wish to interfere with the happiness of a good son; but neither she nor Miss Frere adverted to that anomaly.

'I should not wonder one bit,' said Mrs. Dallas bitterly, 'if he were to disinherit himself.'

That would be bad, Betty agreed—deplorable; however, the thought of her own loss busied her most just now; not of what Pitt might lose. Two days before his departure all these various feelings of the various persons in the little family received a somewhat violent jar.

It was evening. Miss Frere and Pitt had had a ride that afternoon—a long and very spirited one. It might be the last they would take together, and she had enjoyed it with the keenness of that consciousness; as a grain of salt intensifies sweetness, or as discords throw out the value of harmony. Pitt had been bright and lively as much as ever, the ride had been gay, and the one regret on Betty's mind as they dismounted was that she had not more time before her to try what she could do. Pitt, as yet at least, had not grown a bit precise or sanctimonious; he had not talked nonsense, indeed, but then he never had paid her the very poor compliment of doing that. All the more, she as well as the others was startled by what came out in the evening.

All supper-time Pitt was particularly talkative and bright. Mrs. Dallas's face took a gleam from the brightness, and even Mr. Dallas roused up to bear his part in the conversation. When supper was done they still sat round the table, lingering in talk. Then, after a slight pause which had set in, Pitt leaned forward a little and spoke, looking alternately at one and the other of his parents.

'Mother,—father,—I wish you would do one thing before I go away.'

At the change in his tone all three present had pricked up their ears, and every eye was now upon him.

'What is that, Pitt?' his mother said anxiously.

'Have family prayer.'

If a bombshell had suddenly alighted on the table and there exploded, there would have been, no doubt, more feeling of fright, but not more of shocked surprise. Dumb silence followed. Angry eyes were directed towards the speaker from the top and from the bottom of the table. Miss Frere cast down hers with the inward thought, 'Oh, you foolish, foolish fellow! what did you do that for, and spoil everything!' Pitt waited a little.

'It is duty,' he said. 'You yourselves will grant me that.'

'And you fancy it is your duty to remind us of ours!' said his father, with contained scorn.

The mother's agitation was violent—so violent that she had difficulty to command herself. What it was that moved her so painfully she could not have told; her thoughts were in too much of a whirl. Between anger, and fear, and something else, she was in the greatest confusion, and not able to utter a syllable. Betty sat internally railing at Pitt's folly.

'The only question is, Is it duty?—in either case,' the son said steadfastly.

'Exactly!' said his father. 'Well, you have done yours; and I will do mine.'

His wife wondered at his calmness, and guessed that it was studied. Neither of them was prepared for Pitt's next word.

'Will you?' he said simply. 'And will you let me make a beginning now? Because I am going away?'

'Do what you like,' said the older man, with indescribable expression. Betty interpreted it to be restrained rage. His wife thought it was a moved conscience, or mere policy and curiosity; she could not tell which. The words were enough, however, whatever had moved them. Pitt took a Bible and read, still sitting at the table, the Parable of the Talents; and then he kneeled down. The elder Dallas never stirred. Betty knelt at once. Mrs. Dallas sat still at first, but then slipped from her chair to the floor and buried her face in her hands, where tears that were exceedingly bitter flowed beyond all her power to hinder them. For Pitt was praying, and to his mother's somewhat shocked astonishment, not in any words from a book, but in words—where did he get them?—that broke her heart. They were solemn and sweet, tender and simple; there was neither boldness nor shyness in them, although there was a frankness at which Mrs. Dallas wondered, along with the tenderness that quite subdued her.

The third one kneeling there was moved differently. The fountain of her tears was not touched at all, neither had she any share in the passion of displeasure which filled the father and mother. Yet she was in a disturbance almost as complete as theirs. It was a bitter and secret trouble, which as a woman she had to keep to herself, over which her head bowed as she knelt there. Just for that minute she might bow her head and confess to her trouble, while no one could see; and her head, poor girl, went low. She did not in the least approve of Pitt's proceedings; she did not sympathize with his motives; at the same time they did not make her like him the less. On the contrary, and Betty felt it was on the contrary, she could not help admiring his bravery, and she was almost ready to worship his strength. Somebody brave enough to avow truth that is unwelcome, and strong enough to do what goes against the grain with himself; such a person is not to be met with every day, and usually excites the profound respect of his fellows, even when they do not like him. But Betty liked this one, and liked him the more for doing the things she disliked, and it drove her to the bounds of desperation to feel that in the engrossment of his new principles he was carried away from her, and out of her power. Added to all this was the extreme strangeness of the present experience. Absolutely kneeling round the dinner-table!—kneeling to pray! Betty had never known such a thing, nor conceived the possibility of such a thing. In an unconsecrated place, led by unconsecrated lips, in words nowhere set down; what could equal the irregularity and the impropriety? The two women, in their weakness, kneeling, and the master of the house showing by his unmoved posture that he disallowed the whole thing! Incongruous! unfortunate! I am bound to say that Betty understood little of the words she so disapproved; the sea under a stormy wind is not more uneasy than was her spirit; and towards the end her one special thought and effort was bent upon quieting the commotion, and at least appearing unmoved. She was pretty safe, for the other members of the family had each enough to busy him without taking much note of her.

Pitt had but a day or two more to stay; and Miss Frere felt an irresistible impulse to force him into at least one talk more. She hardly knew what she expected, or what she wished from it; only, to let him go so, without one more word, was unbearable. She wanted to get nearer to him, if she could, if she might not bring him nearer to her; and at any rate she wanted the bitter-sweet pleasure of arguing with him. Nothing might come of it, but she must have the talk if she could. So she took the first chance that offered.

The family atmosphere was a little oppressive the next morning; and after breakfast Mr. and Mrs. Dallas both disappeared. Betty seized her opportunity, and reminded Pitt that he had never showed her his particular room, his old workshop and play place. 'It was not much to see,' he said; however, he took her through the house, and up the open flight of steps, where long ago Esther had been used to go for her lessons. The room looked much as it had done at that time; for during Pitt's stay at home he had pulled out one thing after another from its packing or hiding place; and now, mounted birds and animals, coins, shells, minerals, presses, engravings, drawings, and curiosities, made a delightful litter; delightful, for it was not disorderly; only gave one the feeling of a wealth of tastes and pursuits, every one of them pursued to enjoyment. Betty studied the place and the several objects in it with great and serious attention.

'And you understand all these things!' said she.

'So little, that I am ashamed to speak of it.'

'I know!' said Betty; 'that is what nobody says whose knowledge is small. It takes a good deal of knowing to perceive how much one does not know.'

'That is true.'

'And what becomes of all these riches when you are gone away?'

'They remain in seclusion. I must pack them up to-day. It is a job I have reserved to the last, for I like to have them about while I am here.'

He began as he spoke to put away some little articles, and got out paper to wrap up others.

'And how came you by all these tastes? Mr. and Mrs. Dallas do not share them, I think.'

'No. Impossible to say. Inherited from some forgotten ancestor, perhaps.'

'Were there ever any Independents or Puritans among your ancestors?'

'No!' said Pitt, with a laughing look at her. 'The record is clean, I believe, on both sides of the house. My mother has not that on her conscience.'

'But you sympathize with such supposititious ancestors?'

'Why do you say so?'

'Mr. Pitt,' said Betty, sitting down and folding her hands seriously in her lap, 'I wish you would let me ask you one thing.'

'Ask it certainly,' said he.

'But it is really not my business; only, I am puzzled, and interested, and do not know what to think. You will not be displeased?'

'I think I can answer for that.'

'Then do tell me why, when you are just going away and cannot carry it on, you should have done what you did last night?'

'As I am just going away, don't you see, it was my only chance.'

'But I do not understand why you did it. You knew it would be something like an earthquake; and what is the use of earthquakes?'

'You remember the Eastern theory—Burmese, is it? or Siamese?—according to which the world rests on the heads of four elephants; when one of the elephants shakes his head, there is an earthquake. But must not the elephant therefore move his head?'

'But the world does not rest on your head.'

'I do not forget that,' said Pitt gravely. 'Not the world, but a small piece of it does rest on my head, as on that of every other human creature. On the right position and right movement of every one of us depends more than we know. What we have to do is to keep straight and go straight.'

'But did you think it was duty to do what you did last night?'

'I did it in that faith.'

'I wish you would explain to me!' cried the lady. 'I cannot understand. I believe you, of course; but why did you think it duty? It just raised a storm; you know it did; they did not like it; and it would only make them more opposed to your new principles. I do not see how it could do any good.'

'Yes,' said Pitt, who meanwhile was going on with his packing and putting away. 'I know all that. But don't you think people ought to show their colours, as much as ships at sea?'

'Ships at sea do not always show their colours.'

'If they do not, when there is occasion, it is always ground for suspicion. It shows that they are for some reason either afraid or ashamed to announce themselves.'

'I do not understand!' said Miss Frere perplexedly. 'Why should you show your colours?'

'I said I was moved by duty to propose prayers last night. It was more than that.' Pitt stopped in his going about the room and stood opposite his fair opponent, if she can be called so, facing her with steady eyes and a light in them which drew her wonder. 'It was more than duty. Since I have come to see the goodness of Christ, and the happiness of belonging to Him, I wish exceedingly that everybody else should see it and know it as I do.'

'And, if I remember, you intimated once that it was to be the business of your life to make them know it?'

'What do you think of that purpose?'

'It seems to me extravagant.'

'Otherwise, fanatical!'

'I would not express it so. But what are clergymen for, if this is your business?'

'To whom was the command given?'

'To the apostles and their successors.'

'No, it was given to the whole band of disciples; the order to go into all the world and make disciples of every creature.'

'All the disciples!'

'And to all the disciples that other command was given,—"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." And of all the things that a man can want and desire to have given him, there is nothing comparable for preciousness to the knowledge of Christ.'

'But, Mr. Dallas, this is not the general way of thinking?'

'Among those who'—he paused—'who are glad in the love of Christ, I think it must be.'

'Then what are those who are not "glad" in that way?'

'Greatly to be pitied!'

There was a little pause. Pitt went on busily with his work. Betty sat and looked at him, and looked at the varieties of things he was putting under shelter or out of the way. One after another, all bearing their witness to the tastes and appetite for knowledge possessed by the person who had gathered them together. Yes, if Pitt was not a scientist, he was very fond of sciences; and if he were not to be called an artist in some kinds, he was full of feeling for art. What an anomaly he was! how very unlike this room looked to the abode of a fanatic!

'What is to become of all these things?' she asked, pursuing her thoughts.

'They will be safe here till I return.'

'But I mean— You do not understand me. I was thinking rather, what would become of all the tastes and likings to which they bear evidence? How do they match with your new views of things?'

'How do they not match?' said Pitt, stopping short.

'You spoke of giving up all things, did you not?'

'The Bible does,' said Pitt, smiling. 'But that is, if need be for the service or honour of God. Did you think they were to be renounced in all cases?'

'Then what did you mean?'

'The Bible means, evidently, that we are to be so minded, toward them and toward God, that we are ready to give them up and do give them up just so far and so fast as His service calls for it. That is all, and it is enough!'

Betty watched him a little longer, and then began again.

'You say, it is to be the business of your life to—well, how shall I put it?—to set people right, in short. Why don't you begin at the beginning, and attack me?'

'I don't know how to point my guns.'

'Why? Do you think me such a hard case?'

He hesitated, and said 'Yes.'

'Why?' she asked again, with a mixture of mortification and curiosity.

'Your defences have withstood all I have been able to bring to bear in the shape of ordnance.'

'Why do you say that? I have been very much interested in all I have heard you say.'

'I know that; and not in the least moved.'

Betty was vexed. Had her tactics failed so utterly? Did Pitt think she was a person quite and irremediably out of his plane, and inaccessible to the interests which he ranked first of all? She had wanted to get nearer to him. Had she so failed? She would not let the tears come into her eyes, but they were ready, if she would have let them.

'So you give me up!' she said.

'I have no alternative.'

'You have lost all hope of me?'

'No. But at present your eyes are so set in another direction that you will not look the way I have been pointing you. Of course, you do not see what I see.'

'In what direction are my eyes so set?'

'I will not presume to tell Miss Frere what she knows so much better than I do.'

Betty bit her lip.

'What is in that cabinet?' she asked suddenly.

'Coins.'

'Oh, coins! I never could see the least attractiveness in coins.'

'That was because—like some other things—they were not looked at.'

'Well, what is the interest of them?'

'To find out, I am afraid you must give them your attention. They are like witnesses, stepping out from the darkness of the past and telling the history of it—history in which they moved and had a part, you understand.'

'But the history of the past is not so delightful, is it, that one would care much about hearing the witnesses? What is in that other cabinet, where you are standing?'

'That contains my herbarium.'

'All that? You don't mean that all those drawers are filled with dried flowers?'

'Pretty well filled. There is room for some more.'

'How you must have worked!'

'That was play.'

'Then what do you call work?'

'Well, reading law rather comes into that category.'

'You expect to go on reading law?'

'For the present. I approve of finishing things when they are begun.'

'Mr. Dallas, what are you going to do? In what, after all, are you going to be unlike other men? Your mother seems to apprehend some disastrous and mysterious change in all your prospects; I cannot see the necessity of that. In what are you going to be other than she wishes you to be? Are not her fears mistaken?'

Pitt smiled a grave smile; again stopped in his work and stood opposite her.

'I might say "yes" and "no,"' he answered. 'I do not expect to have a red cross embroidered on my sleeve, like the old crusaders. But judge yourself. Can those who live to do the will of God be just like those whose one concern is to do their own will?'

'Mr. Dallas, you insinuate, or your words might be taken to insinuate, that all the rest of us are in the latter class!'

'Whose will do you do?' he said.

There was no answer, for Betty had too much pluck to speak falsely, and too much sense not to know what was truth. She accordingly did not say anything, and after waiting a minute or two Pitt went on with his preparations, locking up drawers, packing up boxes, taking down and putting away the many objects that filled the room. There was not a little work of this sort to be done, and he went on with it busily, and with an evidently trained and skilled hand.

'Then, after finishing with law, do you expect to come back here and unpack all these pretty things again?' she said finally.

'Perhaps. I do not know.'

'Perhaps you will settle in England?'

'I do not yet know what is the work that I have to do in the world. I shall know, but I do not know now. It may be to go to India, or to Greenland; or it may be to come here. Though I do not now see what I should do in Seaforth that would be worth living for.'

India or Greenland! For a young man who was heir to no end of money, and would have acres of land! Miss Betty perceived that here was something indeed very different from the general run of rich young men, and that Mrs. Dallas had not been so far wrong in her forebodings. 'How very absurd!' she said to herself as she went away down the open staircase; 'and what a pity!'



CHAPTER XXXIX.

SKIRMISHING.

To the great chagrin of his mother, and, indeed, of everybody, Pitt took his departure a few days before the necessary set termination of his visit. He must, he declared, have a few days to run down from London into the country and find out the Gainsborough family; if Colonel Gainsborough and his daughter had really gone home, he must know.

'What on earth do you want to know for?' his lather had angrily asked. 'What concern is it to you, in any way? Pitt, I wish you would take all the time you have and use it to make yourself agreeable to Miss Frere. Where could you do better?'

'I have no time for that now, sir.'

'Time! What is time? Don't you admire her?'

'Everyone must do that.'

'I have an idea she don't dislike you. It would suit your mother and me very well. She has not money, but she has everything else. There has been no girl more admired in Washington these two winters past; no girl. You would have a prize, I can tell you, that many a one would like to hinder your getting.'

'I have no time, sir, now; and I must find out my old friends, first of all.'

'Do you mean, you want to marry that girl?' said Mr. Dallas, imprudently flaming out.

Pitt was at the moment engaged in mending up a precious old volume, which by reason of age and use had become dangerously dilapidated. He was manipulating skilfully, as one accustomed to the business, with awl and a large needle, surrounded by his glue-pot and bits of leather and paper. At the question he lifted up his head and looked at his father. Mr. Dallas did not like the look; it was too keen and had too much recognition in it; he feared he had unwarily showed his play. But Pitt answered then quietly, going on with his work again.

'I said nothing of that, sir; I do not know anything about that. My old friends may be in distress; both or one of them; it is not at all unlikely, I think. If things had gone well with them, you would have been almost sure to hear of their whereabouts at least. I made a promise, at any rate, and I am bound to find them, one side or the other of the Atlantic.'

'Don Quixote!' muttered his father. 'Colonel Gainsborough, I have no doubt, has gone home to his people, whom he ought never to have left.'

'In that case I can certainly find them.'

Mr. Dallas seldom made the mistake of spoiling his cause with words; he let the matter drop, though his mouth was full of things he would have liked to speak.

So the time came for Pitt's departure, and he went; and the two women he left behind him hardly dared to look at each other; the one lest she should betray her sorrow, and the other lest she should seem to see it. Betty honestly suffered. She had found Pitt's society delightful; it had all the urbanity without the emptiness of that she was accustomed to. Whether right or wrong, he was undoubtedly a person in earnest, who meant his life to be something more than a dream or a play, and who had higher ends in view than to understand dining, or even to be an acknowledged critic of light literature, or a leader of fashion. Higher ends even than to be at the head of the State or a leader of its armies. There was enough natural nobleness in Betty to understand Pitt, at least in a degree, and to be mightily attracted by all this. And his temper was so fine, his manners so pleasant, his tender deference to his mother so beautiful. Ah, such a man's wife would be well sheltered from some of the harshest winds that blow in the face of human nature! Even if he were a little fanatical, it was a fanaticism which Betty half hoped, half inconsistently feared, would fade away with time. He had stayed just long enough to kindle a tire in her heart, which now she could not with a blow or a breath extinguish; not long enough for the fire to catch any loose tinder lying about on the outskirts of his. Pitt rode away heart-whole, she was obliged to confess to herself, so far, at least, as she was concerned; and Betty had nothing to do now but to feel how that fire bit her, and to stifle the smoke of it. Mrs. Dallas was a woman and a mother, and she saw what Betty would not have had her see for any money.

'I think Pitt was taken with her,' she said to her husband, as one seeks to strengthen a faint belief by putting it into words.

'He is taken with nothing but his own obstinacy!' growled Mr. Dallas.

'His obstinacy never troubled you,' said the mother. 'Pitt was always like that, but never for anything bad.'

'It's for something foolish, then; and that will do as well.'

'Did you sound him?'

'Yes!'

'And what did he say?'

'Said he must see Esther Gainsborough first, confound him!'

'Esther Gainsborough! But he tried and could not find them.'

'He will try on the other side now. He'll waste his time running all over England to discover the family place; and then he will know that there is more looking to be done in America.'

'And he talked of coming over next year! Husband, he must not come. We must go over there.'

'Next summer. Yes, that is the only thing to do.'

'And we will take Betty Frere along with us.'

Mrs. Dallas said nothing of this scheme at present to the young lady, though it comforted herself. Perhaps it would have comforted Betty too, whose hopes rested on the very faint possibility of another summer's gathering at Seaforth. That was a very doubtful possibility; the hope built upon it was vaporously unsubstantial. She debated with herself whether the best thing were not to take the first passable offer that should present itself, marry and settle down, and so deprive herself of the power of thinking about Pitt, and him of the fancy that she ever had thought about him. Poor girl, she had verified the truth of the word which speaks about going on hot coals; she had burned her feet. She had never done it before; she had played with a dozen men at different times, allowed them to come near enough to be looked at; dallied with them, discussed, and rejected, successively, without her own heart ever even coming in danger; as to danger to their's, that indeed had not been taken into consideration, or had not excited any scruple. Now, now, the fire bit her, and she could not stifle it; and a grave doubt came over her whether even that expedient of marriage might be found able to stifle it. She went away from Seaforth a few days after Pitt's departure, a sadder woman than she had come to it, though, I fear, scarce a wiser.

On her way to Washington she tarried a few days in New York; and there it chanced that she had a meeting which, in the young lady's then state of mind, had a tremendous interest for her.

Society in New York at that day was very little like society there now. Even granting that the same principles of human nature underlay its developments, the developments were different. Small companies, even of fashionable people, could come together for an evening; dancing, although loved and practised, did not quite exclude conversation; supper was a far less magnificent affair; and fashion itself was much more necessarily and universally dependent on the accessories of birth, breeding, and education, than is the case at present. It was known who everybody was; parvenus were few; and there was still a flavour left of old-world traditions and colonial antecedents. So, when Miss Frere was invited to one of the best houses in the city to spend the evening, she was not surprised to find only a moderate little company assembled, and dresses and appointments on an easy and unostentatious footing, which now is nearly unheard of. There was elegance enough, however, both in the dresses and persons of many of those present; and Betty was quite in her element, finding herself as usual surrounded by attentive and admiring eyes, and able to indulge her love of conversation; for this young lady liked talking better than dancing. Indeed, there was no dancing in the early part of the evening; it was rather a musical company, and Betty's favourite amusement was often interrupted; for the music was too good, and the people present too well-bred, to allow of that jumble of sounds musical and unmusical which is so distressing, and alas! not so rare.

Several bits of fine, old-fashioned music had been given, from Mozart and Beethoven and Handel; and Betty had got into full swing of conversation again, when a pause around her gave notice that another performer was taking her seat at the piano. Betty checked her speech with a little impulse of vexation, and cast her eyes across the room.

'Who is it now?' she asked.

There was a little murmur of question and answer, for the gentlemen immediately at hand did not know; then she was told, 'It is a Miss Gainsborough.'

'Gainsborough!' Betty's eyes grew large, and her face took a sudden gravity. 'What Gainsborough?'

Nobody knew. 'English, I believe,' somebody said.

All desire to talk died out of Betty's lips; she became as silent as the most rigid decorum could have demanded, and applied herself to listen, and of course those around her were becomingly silent also. What was the astonishment of them all, to hear the notes of a hymn, and then the hymn itself, sung by a sweet voice with very clear accent, so that every word was audible! The hymn was not known to Miss Frere; it was fine and striking; and the melody, also unfamiliar, was exceedingly simple. Everybody listened, that was manifest; it was more than the silence of politeness which reigned in the rooms until the last note was ended. And Betty listened more eagerly than anybody, and a strange thrill ran through her. The voice which sang the hymn was not finer, not so fine as many a one she had heard; it was thoroughly sweet and had a very full and rich tone; its power was only moderate. The peculiarity lay in the manner with which the meaning was breathed into the notes. Betty could not get rid of the fancy that it was a spirit singing, and not a woman. Simpler musical utterance she had never heard, nor any, in her life, that so went to the heart. She listened, and wondered as she listened what it was that so moved her. The voice was tender, pleading, joyous, triumphant. How anybody should dare sing such words in a mixed company, Betty could not conceive; yet she envied the singer; and heard with a strange twinge at her heart the words of the chorus, which was given with the most penetrating ring of truth—

'Glory, glory, glory, glory, Glory be to God on high, Glory, glory, glory, glory, Sing His praises through the sky; Glory, glory, glory, glory, Glory to the Father give: Glory, glory, glory, glory, Sing His praises, all that live!'

The hymn went on to offer Christ's salvation to all who would have it; and closed with a variation of the chorus, taken from the song of the redeemed in heaven,—'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.'

As sweet and free as the jubilant shout of a bird the notes rang; with a lift in them, however, which the unthinking creature neither knows nor can express. Betty's eye roved once or twice round the room during the singing to see how the song was taken by the rest of the company. All listened, but she could perceive that some were bored and some others shocked. Others looked curiously grave.

The music ceased and the singer rose. Nobody proposed that she should sing again.

'What do you think of the good taste of that?' one of Betty's cavaliers asked her softly.

'Oh, don't talk about good taste! Who is she?'

'I—really, I don't know—I believe somebody said she was a teacher somewhere. She has tried her hand on us, hasn't she?'

'A teacher!' Betty repeated the word, but gave no attention to the question. She was looking across the room at the musician, who was standing by the piano talking with a gentleman. The apartment was not so large but that she could see plainly, while it was large enough to save her from the charge of ill-bred staring. She saw a moderately tall figure, as straight as an Indian, with the head exquisitely set on the shoulders, the head itself covered with an abundance of pale brown hair, disposed at the back in a manner of careless grace which reminded Betty of a head of Sappho on an old gem in her possession. The face she could not see quite so well, for it was partly turned from her; Betty's attention centred on the figure and carriage. A pang of jealous rivalry shot through her as she looked. There was not a person in the room that carried her head so nobly, nor whose pose was so stately and graceful; yet, stately as it was, it had no air of proud self-consciousness, nor of pride at all; it was not that; it was simple, maidenly dignity, not dignity aped. Betty read so much, and rapidly read what else she could see. She saw that the figure she was admiring was dressed but indifferently; the black silk had certainly seen its best days, if it was not exactly shabby; no ornaments whatever were worn with it. The fashion of garments at that day was, as I have remarked, very trying to any but a good figure, while it certainly showed such a one to advantage. Betty knew her own figure could bear comparison with most; the one she was looking at would bear comparison with any. Miss Gainsborough was standing in the most absolute quiet, the arms crossed over one another, with no ornament but their whiteness.

'A good deal of aplomb there?' whispered one of Betty's attendants, who saw whither her eyes had gone.

'Aplomb!' repeated Betty. 'That is not aplomb!'

'Isn't it? Why not?'

'It is something else,' said Betty, eyeing still the figure she was commenting on. 'You don't speak of balance unless—how shall I put it? Don't you know what I mean?'

'No!' laughed her companion.

'You might save me the trouble of telling you, if you were clever. You know you do not speak of "balance," except—well, except where either the footing or the feet are somehow doubtful. You would not think of "balance" as belonging to a mountain.'

'A mountain!' said the other, looking over at Esther, and still laughing.

'Yes; I grant you there is not much in common between the two things; only that element of undisturbableness. Do you know Miss Gainsborough?'

'I have not the honour. I have never met her before.'

'I must know her. Who can introduce me?' And finding her hostess at this moment near her, Betty went on: 'Dear Mrs. Chatsworth, do take me over and introduce me to Miss Gainsborough! I am filled with admiration and curiosity. But first, who is she?'

'I really can tell you little. She is a great favourite of my friend Miss Fairbairn; that is how I came to know her. She teaches in Mme. Duval's school. She is English, I believe. Miss Fairbairn says she is very highly accomplished; and I believe it is true.'

'Well, please introduce me. I am dying to know her.'

The introduction was made; the gentleman who had been talking to Miss Gainsborough withdrew; the two girls were left face to face.

Yes, what a face! thought Betty, as soon as it was turned upon her; and with every minute of their being together the feeling grew. Not like any face she had ever seen in her life, Betty decided; what the difference was it took longer to determine. Good features, with refinement in every line of them; a fair, delicate skin, matching the pale brown hair, Betty had seen as good repeatedly. What she had not seen was what attracted her. The brow, broad and intellectual, had a most beautiful repose upon it; and from under it looked forth upon Betty two glorious grey eyes, pure, grave, thoughtful, penetrating, sweet. Yet more than all the rest, perhaps, which struck Miss Frere, was an expression, in mouth and eyes both, which is seen on no faces but of those who have gone through discipline and have learned the habit of self-renunciation, endurance, and loving ministry.

The two girls sat down together at Betty's instance.

'Will you forgive me?' she said. 'I am a stranger, but I do want to ask you a question or two. May I? and will you hear me patiently? I see you will.'

The other made a courteous, half smiling sign of assent, not as if she were surprised. Betty noticed that.

'It is very bold, for a stranger,' she went on, making her observations while she spoke; 'but the thing is earnest with me, and I must seize my chance, if it is a chance. It has happened,'—she lowered her voice somewhat and her words came slower,—'it has happened that I have been studying the subject of religion a good deal lately; it interests me; and I want to ask you, why did you sing that hymn?'

'That particular hymn?'

'No, no; I mean, why did you sing a hymn at all? It is not the usual thing, you know.'

'May I ask you a counter question? What should be the motive with which one sings, or does anything of the sort?'

'Motive? why, to please people, I suppose.'

'And you think my choice was not happy?'

'What does she ask me that for?' thought Betty; 'she knows, just as well as I do, what people thought of it. What is she up to?' But aloud she answered,—