'Dear Cardie, your difficulty is a very real one, and only time and prayerful consideration can solve it; but beware how you let the wishes of your dead mother, dear and binding as they may be to you, prove a snare to your conscience. Richard, I knew her well enough to be sure that was the last thing she would desire.' The blood rushed to Richard's face, eager words rose to his lips, but he restrained them; but the grateful gleam in his eyes spoke volumes. 'That is your real opinion, Aunt Milly.' 'Indeed it is. Unready hands, an unprepared heart, are not fit for the sanctuary. I may wish with you that difficulties had not arisen, that you could carry out your parents' dedication and wish; but vocation cannot be forced, neither must you fall into Olive's mistake of supposing self-sacrifice is the one thing needful. After all, our first duty is to be true to ourselves.' 'Aunt Milly, how wise you are!' he exclaimed in involuntary admiration. 'No one, not even my father, put it so clearly. You are right, I do not mean to sacrifice myself unless I can feel it my duty to do so. But it is a question I must settle with myself.' 'True, dear, only remember the brave old verse-- "Stumbleth he who runneth fast? Dieth he who standeth still? Not by haste or rest can ever Man his destiny fulfil." "Never hasting, never resting," a fine life-motto, Cardie; but our time is nearly at an end, we must be going now.' As they walked along, Richard returned of his own accord to the subject they had been discussing, and owned his indecision was a matter of great grief to him. 'Conscientious doubts will find their answer some day,' replied Mildred; 'but I wish you had not refused to confide them to your father.' Richard bit his lip. 'It was wrong of me; I know it, Aunt Milly; but it would have been so painful to him, and so humiliating to myself.' 'Hardly so painful as to be treated like a stranger by his own son. You have no idea how sorely your reserve has fretted him.' 'It was cowardly of me; but indeed, Aunt Milly, the whole question was involved in difficulty. My father is sometimes a little vague in his manner of treating things; he is more scholarly than practical, and I own I dreaded complication and disappointment.' Mildred sighed. Perhaps after all he was right. Her brother was certainly a little dreamy and wanting in concentration and energy just now; but little did Richard know the depth of his father's affection. Just as the old war-horse will neigh at the sound of the battle, and be ready to rush into the midst of the glittering phalanx, so would Arnold Lambert have warred with the grisly phantoms of doubt and misbelief that were leagued against Richard's boyish faith, ready to lay down his life if need be for his boy; but as he sat hour after hour in his lonely study, the sadness closed more heavily round him--sadness for his lost love in heaven, his lost confidence on earth.