Where had she got such an idea? She had certainly not learned it at the “college,” for the institution was “denominational” and had no text-books of later date than 1850. Somewhere she had found a volume of Huxley’s “Lay Sermons,” but she had got nothing out of that, for the Major had discovered her reading page three, and had solemnly consigned the book to the flames. No, it was simply that she had been thinking for herself. The Bishop took it well. He did not try to frighten her, he did not even show her his distress of mind. He told her that she was an angel, the very soul of purity and goodness, and that God would surely lead her to truth if only she kept herself humble. As Sylvia put it to me: “He knew that I would come back, and I knew that I would never come back.” And that was the situation between them to the very end—the bitter end. He always believed that she would learn to see things as he saw them. He died a year or so ago, the courtly old gentleman—consoled by the thought that he was now to meet his God and Sylvia face to face, and hear the former explain to the latter the difference between Divine Law and mere human ideas of Justice. The rest of the family were not so patient as the Bishop. To have a heretic in the household was even worse than having a Methodist! Mrs. Castleman, who agreed with the Bible as she agreed with everything, was dumb with bewilderment; while the Major set to work to hunt out dusty volumes from the attic. He read every word of Paley’s “Evidences” aloud to his daughter, and some of Gladstone’s essays, and several other books, the very names of which she forgot. You may smile at this picture, but it was a serious matter to the Castlemans, who had based their morality upon the fear of fire and brimstone and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, and who kept Sylvia three months from school to impress such images upon her imagination.