Henry had seen the physician and minister whom Miss Hart had mentioned as the lovers of Lois Carroll. The _young physician_ happened to be a bald, broad-faced man, with a long nose, which turned up at the end, as if looking at his forehead, and the _young_ minister, a man whose hair was frosted with the snow of sixty winters, and on whose evangelical countenance disease had written deeper lines than those of age. Charles, too, the lover-cousin, proved to be an only brother, whose lingering hours of disease she had soothed with a Christian sister's holy ministration. Henry became a frequent, and, as he had reason to believe, a welcome visiter, at the house. He found Lois skilled in all the graceful accomplishments of her sex--her mind was enriched with oriental and classical literature, her memory stored with the brightest and purest gems of genius and taste; yet, like the wise men of the East, who brought their gold and frankincense and myrrh to the manger of the babe of Bethlehem, she laid these precious offerings in lowliness of spirit, at the feet of her Redeemer. All at once, Henry perceived a cloud come over the confidence in which he was established there. The good aunt was cold and distant; Lois, though still gentle and kind, was silent and reserved, and he thought he caught her melting blue eyes fixed upon him more than once with a sad and pitying expression. "What has occurred?" asked he with the frankness so peculiar to him--when for a moment he was left alone with her "I am no longer a welcome guest." "Forgive us," answered Lois, her face mantling with earnest blushes, "if we feel constrained to deny ourselves the pleasure we have derived from your society. As long as we believed you the friend of religion, though not her acknowledged votary, our hearts acknowledged a sympathy with yours, and indulged a hope that you would ere long go goal for goal with us for the same immortal prize. But an infidel, Mr. More! Oh! my soul!" continued she, clasping her hands fervently together, and looking upward, "come not thou into his secret!" "An infidel!" cried Henry, "and do you believe me such, and condemn me as such, unheard, without granting me an opportunity of vindication?" "We would not have admitted the belief from an authority less respectable. The intelligence came from one who had been an inmate of your family, and expressed for you the warmest friendship. We were told that you ridicule our faith, make the Bible a scorn and mockery, and expose us as individuals to contempt and derision."