'Oh, Miss Lavington,' cried he, impatiently, 'will you, too, send me back to that cold abstraction? I came to you, however presumptuous, for living, human advice to a living, human heart; and will you pass off on me that Proteus-dream the Church, which in every man's mouth has a different meaning? In one book, meaning a method of education, only it has never been carried out; in another, a system of polity,--only it has never been realised;--now a set of words written in books, on whose meaning all are divided; now a body of men who are daily excommunicating each other as heretics and apostates; now a universal idea; now the narrowest and most exclusive of all parties. Really, before you ask me to hear the Church, I have a right to ask you to define what the Church is.' 'Our Articles define it,' said Argemone drily. 'The "Visible Church," at least, it defines as "a company of faithful men, in which," etc. But how does it define the "Invisible" one? And what does "faithful" mean? What if I thought Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in their way, and better members of the "Invisible Church," than the torturer-pedant Laud, or the facing bothways Protestant-Manichee Taylor?' It was lucky for the life of young Love that the discussion went no further: Argemone was becoming scandalised beyond all measure. But, happily, the colonel interposed,-- 'Look here; tell me if you know for whom this sketch is meant?' 'Tregarva, the keeper: who can doubt?' answered they both at once. 'Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly?' 'Yes,' said Lancelot. 'But what wonder, with such a noble subject! What a grand benevolence is enthroned on that lofty forehead!' 'Oh, you would say so, indeed,' interposed Honoria, 'if you knew him! The stories that I could tell you about him! How he would go into cottages, read to sick people by the hour, dress the children, cook the food for them, as tenderly as any woman! I found out, last winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and water, to give out of his own wages--which are barely twelve shillings a week- -five shillings a week for more than two months to a poor labouring man, to prevent his going to the workhouse, and being parted from his wife and children.' 'Noble, indeed!' said Lancelot. 'I do not wonder now at the effect his conversation just now had on me.' 'Has he been talking to you?' said Honoria eagerly. 'He seldom speaks to any one.' 'He has to me; and so well, that were I sure that the poor were as ill off as he says, and that I had the power of altering the system a hair, I could find it in my heart to excuse all political grievance-mongers, and turn one myself.' Claude Mellot clapped his white woman-like hands.