It was a singular question, and it sent the hot blood quickly to Colonel Schuyler’s face, while a feeling of shame and remorse took possession of him. Years ago he had with other young men of his age been confirmed as a matter of course, and because it was the right thing to do, but he had never reaped any benefits from the confirmation, or given heed to that without which the laying on of hands is of no avail. When Emily died, and he saw what religion could do for her, he set about trying to work out his salvation himself, and by acts alone. Every feast and fast day was for a time observed, while he gave largely to the church and the poor, and insisted that his daughter should be confirmed, and expressed a wish that Godfrey would do so, too. But Godfrey answered “No.” He was not going to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, he said, when he liked them first-rate, and should lie if he said he didn’t! So Godfrey was given up, but the colonel saw his daughters confirmed, and encouraged them in their Sunday-school teaching, and never allowed them to read light literature on Sunday if he knew it. He asked a blessing at the table, the shortest he could find; kept the Sabbath day strictly, so far as dinners, and drives, and company were concerned: but there was nothing real about it, nothing which in the other world would have weighed a straw with Him through whom alone we go to God, and when Edith startled him with the question, “Do you ever pray?” he answered her truthfully, “Not often, no.” “Then let us begin now,” and Edith held his hand in both hers. “I’ve never prayed either as I ought, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve so much to be thankful for, and need help so much to make me what I should be. Let us begin together, to-night.” He could not resist her, and there in the moonlight, with their faces toward Emily’s grave and Abelard s, they knelt down side by side; and though the Lord’s Prayer was all they said, it was praying just the same, and God heard and blessed them, for He knew the wish there was in their hearts, and sent to Edith at least the peace she so desired. And so, with a great happiness and feeling of rest and quiet in her heart, she laid her head upon her pillow, and sleep fell softly upon her in her new home at Schuyler Hill. CHAPTER XXVIII. ONE DAY IN HAMPSTEAD. Edith was very sweet and beautiful in her white cambric dress when she descended to the breakfast-room next morning, and took her seat at the table. Miss Rossiter was not present. She had not slept at all for thinking of poor Emily, she said, and was suffering from the combined effects of brandy and morphine and headache, and had her coffee in her room, and felt as if she was resenting something, she hardly knew what, and that if ever there was a martyr she was one now.