And now, when rest was won, there came the want for more. Religion is love. Rachel wanted thought, that child of the intellect, as love is the child of the heart. She did not know herself what it was that she needed, until she discovered and possessed it--until she could read a book, a pamphlet, a scrap of verse, and brood over it, like a bird over her young, not for hours, not for days, but for weeks--blest in that silent meditation. Her mind was tenacious, but slow; she read few books--many would have disturbed her. Sweeter and pleasanter was it to Rachel to think over what she did read, and to treasure it up in the chambers of her mind, than to fill those chambers with heaps of knowledge. Indeed for knowledge Rachel cared comparatively little. In such as displayed more clearly the glories of God's creation she delighted; but man's learning, man's science, touched her not. To think was her delight; a silent, solitary, forbidden pleasure, in which Rachel had to indulge by stealth. For all this time, and especially since the death of her sister, she suffered keenly from home troubles, from a little domestic persecution, painful, pertinacious, and irritating. Mrs. Gray vaguely felt that her daughter was not like other girls, and not knowing that she was in reality very far beyond most; feeling, too, that Rachel was wholly unlike herself, and jealously resenting the fact, she teased her unceasingly, and did her best to interrupt the fits of meditation, which she did not scruple to term "moping." When her mind was most haunted with some fine thought, Rachel had to talk to her step-mother, to listen to her, and to take care not to reply at random; if she failed in any of these obligations, half-an-hour's lecture was the least penalty she could expect. Dear to her, for this reason; were the few moments of solitude she could call her own; dear to her was that little room, where she could steal away at twilight time and think in peace.