Mr Marshall was too much at home in the White Bear to need announcement. He tapped softly at the parlour door, and opened it. "Mrs Gertrude, I don't care who saith it! it's a wicked heresy!" were the first words he heard, in the blunt tones of Temperance Murthwaite. "And it's not true to say we Puritans teach any such thing. It's a calumny and a heresy both.--Mr Marshall, I'm fain to see you. Do, pray you, tell this young gentlewoman we hold not that if a man but believe in the merits of Christ, he may live as he list, and look for Heaven in the end. 'Tis a calumny, I say--a wicked calumny!" "A calumny as old as the Apostle James, Mrs Murthwaite," answered Mr Marshall, as he turned from greeting Lady Louvaine. "Some in those days had, it should seem, been abusing Paul's doctrine of justification by faith, and said that a man need but believe, and not live according thereto." "Why, Mr Marshall, I have heard you to say a man may believe and be saved!" cried Gertrude, who sat on a velvet-covered stool beside Lady Louvaine, having run in from the next door without hood or scarf. "That I doubt not, Mrs Gertrude, and yet may, since you have heard Paul, and John, and the Lord Himself, to say it in the Word. But, believe what? Believe that a man once lived whose name was Jesus, and who was marvellous good, and wrought many great works? That faith shall not save you,--no more than believing in King James's Majesty should. It is a living faith you must have, and that is a dead." "Mr Marshall, I thought Puritans made much of the doctrine of imputed righteousness?" "You thought truth, Mrs Gertrude." "Well, but what is that save believing that Christ hath wrought all goodness for me, and I need not work any goodness for mine own salvation? Look you, there is no need, if all be done." "No need of what? No need that you should attempt to do what you never can do, or no need that you should show your love to Him that did it for you at the cost of His own life?" "Well!" said Gertrude in a slow, deprecating tone, "but--"