"My gratitude would indeed be very great for such a permission," he replied, endeavouring to betray as little pleasure as possible. "I do assure you, my dear lady, such precautions are far from unnecessary. Heaven, for its own especial purposes, which are to us inscrutable, ordains that its tender care to usward shall be shown rather by giving us prudence and forethought to avoid contact with the wicked, than by any removal of them from our path: wherefore I hold myself bound in righteousness to confess that the papers concerning your affairs--even yours, my honoured lady, might run a very fearful risk of being abducted, and purloined, by some of the many ungodly persons with whom no dispensation of Providence hath yet interfered to prevent their jostling its own people when they travel, as sometimes unhappily they must do, in stage-coaches." "Ah, Mr. Corbold!" replied the widow, (mentally alluding to a conversation which she had held with Mr. Cartwright on the separation to be desired between the chosen and the not-chosen even in this world; such being, as he said, a sort of type or foreshowing of that eternal separation promised in the world to come;)--"Ah, Mr. Corbold! if I had the power to prevent it, none of the chosen should ever again find themselves obliged to submit to such promiscuous mixture with the ungodly as this unsanctified mode of travelling must lead to. Had I power and influence sufficient to carry such an undertaking into effect, I would certainly endeavour to institute a society of Christians, who, by liberal subscriptions among themselves, might collect a fund for defraying the travelling expenses of those who are set apart. It must be an abomination, Mr. Corbold, that such should be seen travelling on earth by the same vehicles as those which convey the wretched beings who are on their sure and certain road to eternal destruction!" "Ah, dearest madam!" replied the attorney, with a profound sigh, "such thoughts as those are buds of holiness that shall burst forth into full-blown flowers of eternal glory round your head in heaven! But, alas! no such society is yet formed, and the sufferings of the righteous, for the want of it, are truly great!" "I am sure they must be, Mr. Corbold," replied the kind Mrs. Mowbray in an accent of sincere compassion; "but, at least in the present instance, you may be spared such unseemly mixture, if you will be good enough not to object to travelling three in the carriage. Helen is very slight, and I trust you will not be greatly incommoded."