The ignorance of the peasantry was with her, as with him, a source of pain and dissatisfaction. She and her mother had been planning, before the death of the latter, how some small beginning might be made to get the children taught just such rudiments of knowledge as should raise them above the level of the beasts they tended. Hardly a single labourer or respectable working man in country districts could either read or write. Sometimes a substantial farmer could do no more than set his name to a bill; and clever lads, who might have raised themselves in the world, were kept down and hampered all their lives by the inability to master the rudiments of education. Bride’s grief was that none of the villagers and fisher-folks could read the Bible--that it must remain to them a sealed book, save when others expounded it to them. Eustace’s objection to ignorance was very differently grounded; but hitherto the subject had been one of common interest, and when together they had taken pleasure in discussing Bride’s favourite plan of erecting a small school in memory of her mother, where such men, women, and children as could find time and had the desire to learn might be taught by a qualified person, and gradually win for the place a higher standard of life and faith than was to be found in the surrounding villages. But even this subject to-day did not rouse in the girl any spark of her wonted interest. She looked at him with steadfast sadness, as he spoke of what he meant to try to do in this matter in other places (he did not, from motives of delicacy, identify himself too much with St. Bride in talking to his cousin), and said very gently, but with a severity which was not altogether without intention-- “I am not sure that the people will not be better as they are, Eustace, than taught as you will be likely to teach them.” The young man flushed quickly. Philosopher though he was, he was human, and this was a taunt he hardly cared to let pass. “Do you mean to say that you think I should do them harm and not good by helping them out of their mists of darkness?” he asked, with slight incisiveness of manner. “Do you think you _would_ be helping them out of the mists of darkness?” asked the girl, suddenly turning her eyes upon him, with a look he could not fathom. “Certainly,” he answered quickly, and without hesitation. Her face was turned away then. He only saw the pale pure profile outlined against the sky. “I am afraid not,” she answered, in a quiet serious way, that indicated sadness if not depression; “there are worse forms of darkness than intellectual darkness.” “Do you think so?” he answered, in a tone that implied absolute disagreement. “I know it,” she answered, without the smallest hesitation. “Intellectual darkness is sad, carried to the extent we see it here. But spiritual darkness is a thousand times sadder, and, oh! how much more difficult to enlighten!”