With a quiet, cat-like watchfulness, Mr. Filmer remarked everything which passed between Eda Brandon and Charles Dudley. It was not words that he laid in wait for, but looks and gestures, the involuntary as well as the voluntary, the trifling as well as the important. Nothing escaped him, not even the accidental trait or the slightest possible indication of a passing emotion. Not the quick glance of the eye, withdrawn as soon as given, not the trembling hand nor the quivering lip, not the irrepressible sigh; not the fit of absence and the sudden raising of the look to the loved one's face, was unremarked by one who knew human nature well, and had made a trade of observation. "They love," was his conclusion, "and they understand each other. That walk home has concluded what seems to have been begun long ago. Now, then, what good is to be derived from this affair?" It is a common calculation which he made, but one very apt to mislead. Men who see others labouring for the gratification of their passions, are often tempted by the opportunity to endeavour to rule them for their own purposes, and then, whatever event occurs, they ask, "What good is to be derived from this affair?" But they often miscalculate, because they do not ask themselves also, "Is there anything to be made of it, with honour and honesty?" If they did they might succeed where they every day fail. Mr. Filmer, however, had his own particular views, which led him upon one peculiar course. His very position gave a direction to all his actions. The Roman priest stands alone amidst the world, separated from all the dearest ties of our nature by an irremovable barrier. He may have sympathies, but they are curtailed and restricted; he may have affections, but they are limited and enthralled. One predominant object is ever before him: one career is fixed for his efforts. He stands alone in the world, I repeat, not so much the servant of God as the servant of a hierarchy, to the interest and advancement of which all his energies must be devoted, and for whose purposes all his talents must be employed. As long as he can bring the satisfaction of affections, and the gratification of any passions, within the circle to which the whole course of education from his earliest years has restricted his consciousness of duty, perhaps they may be more strongly--I had almost said more fiercely--exercised, from the very fact of their narrow range; but the moment they would go beyond that limit, the petrifying influence of an engrossing church comes in, and changes the man into the mere representation of a system.