only just learning how to behave himself decently! No doubt, ever since she began to listen to reason, the idea of her had been spreading like a sweet odour in his heart, but not because she had listened to _him_. The very fulness of his admiration had made him wrathful with the intellectual dishonesty--for in her it could not be stupidity--that quenched his worship, and the first dawning sign of a _reasonable_ soul drew him to her feet, where, like Pygmalion before his statue, he could have poured out his heart in thanks, that she consented to be a woman. But even the intellectual phantom, nay, even the very phrase of being in love with her, had never risen upon the dimmest verge of his consciousness--and that although her being had now become to him of all but absorbing interest. I say _all but_, because Malcolm knew something of One whose idea she was, who had uttered her from the immortal depths of his imagination. The man to whom no window into the treasures of the Godhead has yet been opened, may well scoff at the notion of such a love, for he has this advantage, that, while one like Malcolm can never cease to love, he, gifted being, can love to-day and forget to-morrow--or next year--where is the difference? Malcolm’s main thought was--what a grand thing it would be to rouse a woman like Clementina to lift her head into the regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth. If anyone think that love has no right to talk religion, I answer for Malcolm at least, asking, Whereof shall a man speak, if not out of the abundance of his heart? That man knows little either of love or of religion who imagines they ought to be kept apart. Of what sort, I ask, is either, if unfit to approach the other? Has God decreed, created a love that must separate from himself? Is Love then divided? Or shall not love to the heart created, lift up the heart to the Heart creating? Alas for the love that is not treasured in heaven! for the moth and the rust will devour it. Ah, these pitiful old moth-eaten loves! All the journey then Malcolm was thinking how to urge the beautiful lady into finding for herself whether she had a father in heaven or not. A pupil of Mr Graham, he placed little value in argument that ran in any groove but that of persuasion, or any value in persuasion that had any end but action. On the second day of the journey, he rode up to his mistress, and told her, taking care that Lady Clementina should hear, that Mr Graham was now preaching in London, adding that for his part he had never before heard anything fit to call preaching. Florimel did not show much interest, but asked where, and Malcolm fancied he could see Lady Clementina make a mental note of the place. “If only,” he thought, “she would let the power of that man’s faith have a chance of influencing her, all would be well.”