“Your groom’s testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to go and see. I intend to find the place this evening.” “It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be allowed to preach in a church, you know.” “Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it --with this difference, that she won’t be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew-openers beneath are illustrating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out the vial of his indignation upon over their heads;--doing it calmly and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh.” Once more, Florimel laughed aloud. “Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey.” “I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood,” said Clementina. “No canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or their pew-rents.” “Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk. My groom is quite an aristocrat beside you.” “Not an atom more than I am. I do acknowledge an aristocracy-- but it is one neither of birth nor of intellect nor of wealth.” “What is there besides to make one?” “Something I hope to find before long. What if there be indeed a kingdom and an aristocracy of life and truth!--Will you or will you not go with me to hear this schoolmaster?” “I will go anywhere with you, if it were only to be seen with such a beauty,” said Florimel, throwing her arms round her neck and kissing her. Clementina gently returned the embrace, and the thing was settled. The sound of their wheels, pausing in swift revolution with the clangor of iron hoofs on rough stones at the door of the chapel, refreshed the diaconal heart like the sound of water in the desert. For the first time in the memory of the oldest, the day-spring of success seemed on the point of breaking over Hope Chapel. The ladies were ushered in by Mr Marshal himself, to Clementina’s disgust and Florimel’s amusement, with much the same attention as his own shop-walker would have shown to carriage-customers.--How could a man who taught light and truth be found in such a mean _entourage_? But the setting was not the jewel. A real stone _might_ be found in a copper ring. So said Clementina to herself as she sat waiting her hoped for instructor.