Let us examine more closely into the causes of the melancholy which often rested like a cloud on her soul. In the first place, Flora was childless; and this, to a loving spirit like hers, was no light trial. She would have given all the grandeur of her home, all the jewels which glittered in her hair, all the beautiful things which met her eye wherever she turned it, to feel little arms clasping her neck, to hear infant lips lisp the sweet name of mother! Flora had never yet, amidst all the outward forms of religion, acquired that which is the very essence of it, submission to the will of the Almighty. Her own will had never been brought into the quiet subjection which is the result of confidence in God’s wisdom and love, and which is the source of true peace and joy. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, she "murmured," not with her lips, but in the depths of her heart. And Flora pined for her mother; she longed again to rest her weary head on a parent’s bosom, and to be blessed with a parent’s counsels. She could not conceal from herself that her marriage had separated her from the home of her childhood. It was not so much, perhaps, that Sir Amery could never quite forgive Mrs. Vernon’s opposition to his marriage, as that he feared her influence over his wife. Flora had, he thought, too many narrow prejudices, acquired in her puritanical home: he had no wish to see them strengthened. He had no wish to have a praying, sermonizing wife who would see sin in what he thought harmless, and who would always be attempting to convert him to her own peculiar views of religion. He had put down, sometimes with a jest, sometimes even with a frown, the few feeble attempts made by Flora soon after their marriage to win him to pay more attention to the outward observances of religion. The Lord did not bless these attempts--they resulted in failure and disappointment; and Flora bitterly recalled her mother’s words, that it is as impossible for one human being to change the heart of another, as it would be to bring water from the stony rock, or to call up fire from the ocean.