The Duke looked down at the girl’s face seen in profile as she half raised it towards him, and he marvelled at her, yet traced in her words the outcome of her mother’s teaching, and felt as though his wife were speaking to him through the lips of her daughter. He had always regarded his wife as something of a saint or angel--recognising in her deep spirituality a calibre of mind altogether different from his own, and in her faith, intense and vivid, a something vastly different from his own dry orthodoxy. He had often listened to her in wonder and amaze, half lifted up by her earnestness, half shrinking from following her into regions so strangely unfamiliar; but there was in Bride’s line of argument a thread of practical common-sense which aroused in him a curiosity to know more of her mind, and he said tentatively-- “You mean that you do not believe even in political reform unless it is based on the highest spiritual motives?” “I think I mean,” answered Bride thoughtfully, “that I do not believe there _can_ be any true reform at all that does not come from a spiritual impulse. How can I say it best? Eustace is fond of quoting the Bible to me. He bids me remember that we are called upon by Christ to love our neighbours as ourself, and goes on to point out that he is trying to work upon that principle. But he forgets that we are _first_ bidden to love God with all our soul and mind and strength, and that the brotherly love is the outcome, the corollary of the love to God which should be the leading thought of our whole life.” “Yes!--and what do you deduce from that?”