Lottie was conscious of a strange lightness of heart when she awoke on the morrow. It seemed as if her life had been unexpectedly enriched. She could not understand it, nor did she seek to, being contented with the fact that she was happy. She had always been seeking her own enjoyment, and now she was happier than ever before. She was not a philosopher who must analyze everything. She widely differed from some prudent people who must take an emotion to pieces, and resolve it into its original elements, and thus be sure that it is properly caused and wholesome before enjoying it. Many seem to partake of life's pleasures as did the members of the royal family of their feasts, in the days of the ancient Roman empire, when it was feared that poison lurked in every dish. We have seen, however, that Lottie was not morbidly conscientious. She had gathered honey everywhere, and often in spite of conscience's protest. But now, for a rarity, conscience appeared with, and not against her. She was satisfied with the fact that she felt better than ever before; and the majority of even somewhat experienced Christians ask, as their ground of confidence, not "What is truth?" "What has God promised?"--but, "How do I feel to-day?" Little wonder, then, if inexperienced Lottie, with everything to learn, was content with being happy. She had always looked upon religion as a painful necessity at some remote and desperate emergency of the future; but, after the hours spent with Hemstead, it seemed a source of joy beyond all the pleasures of her highly favored life. She was like one who had been living in the glare of artificial light, brilliant enough, it is true, but who had suddenly come out into the natural sunshine, and found it warmer, sweeter,--in brief, just what she craved and needed. The distrust of these exalted and emotional states is general, and often well-founded, especially when experienced by such mercurial temperaments as that of Lottie Marsden. And when it is remembered that her ideas of true religion were of the vaguest kind, the conservative will think, "Whatever may take place in a book, the morning dew would be the type of all this feeling in real life."