Mrs. Chisholm had a natural and spontaneous inclination towards curates. She respected--indeed, she admired all the ranks of the hierarchy and all their members, and she never could be induced to regard them as in any way divided in spirit or opinions. They were all sacred creatures in her eves, from the most sucking of curates to the most soapy of bishops; but the curates had the preëminence in the order of this remarkably unworldly woman's estimation. Her Augustine had been a curate; he might, indeed, have become a bishop in the fulness of time, and supposing the order of merit to have been attended to by the prime minister _in posse_; but fate had otherwise decreed, and his apotheosis had occurred at the curate-stage of his career. For this perfectly laudable and appreciable reason Mrs. Chisholm liked the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh, and would have liked him had he been the silliest, most commonplace, most priggish young parson in existence--had he had weak eyes and a weak mind, Low-Church opinions, and a talent for playing the flute. But the Reverend Cuthbert had none of these things. On the contrary, he was a handsome manly young fellow, who looked as if he possessed an intellect and a conscience, and was in the habit of using both; who had a tall well-built figure, fine expressive dark eyes, and an independent, sensible, cheerful manner, which few people could have resisted. Helen Manningtree had never made any attempt at resisting it. She had known Cuthbert Farleigh for eighteen months, and she had been in love with him just twelve out of the number. She was not aware of the circumstance at first, for she had had no experience of similar feelings; she had had none of the preliminary feints and make-believes which often precede the great passion of such persons as are calculated to feel a great passion, and the tepid sincerity of such as are not. Helen had never experienced a sensation of preference for any one of the limited and not very varied number of young country gentlemen whom she had met since she "came out" (the term had a restricted significance in her case); and when she did experience and avow to herself such a sentiment in the instance of the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh, she readily accounted for it to herself by impressing on her own memory that, however young he might look and be, he was her spiritual pastor and master--and, of course, that occult influence affected her very deeply--and by making up her mind that he preached beautifully. And Cuthbert? What was the young lady with the brown eyes, and the brown curls, and the fresh healthful complexion; the young lady who was not indeed strictly beautiful, nor, perhaps, exactly pretty, but who was so charming, so graceful, so thoroughly well-bred; such an innate lady in thought, word, and deed, in accent, in gesture, in manner;--what was she to him? He had asked himself that same question many a time; he asked it now, as he came up to the open