is at the bottom of all the mock humility and strange burlesque of religion which these nominal saints display," observed Beatrice. "The plainest declarations of Scripture are against known, public, prescribed fasts, emaciating and disfiguring the body; but St. Veronica, with the most delirious vanity, writes to her neighbours, 'Anew I make myself the mediatrix between God and sinners.'"

"Ah!" said Lady Anne, eagerly, "have you not read what our Cardinal also says, in allusion to her? A spiritual union with certain devout souls God has been pleased to make manifest to them by more sensible signs, accompanied by formalities like those used in ordinary marriages. Of such we read in the life of the ecstatic St. Catherine of Sienna, and to this exalted dignity God was pleased to exalt Veronica, as he revealed to her.”

"You seem to have a thousand-horse power of believing in the merits of those fabulous saints; but what you mention of St. Veronica is pride in a strange state of lunacy," observed Lord Iona, gravely. "We see in modern sisterhoods how those who begin perhaps with good intentions are gradually betrayed into such spiritual vanity as almost to claim Divine honours for themselves. There is no evidence that St. Catherine ever existed, and it would certainly be better for her that she never was born than that she ever gave countenance to any tale so blasphemous and presumptuous as her legend."

"You should see Murillo's picture of that subject," said Lady Anne, reverentially: "it is sublime;

and also his portrait of St. Sebastian, which it is quite excruciating to look at."

"I never feel edified by pictures of bodily suffering, which is much better left to our imagination," replied Beatrice, thoughtfully. "It seems part of the materialism in your church, that so much prominence is given to personal tortures. Our sympathy for the most frightful corporeal torments, great as it ought to be, and is, cannot be so intense as that excited by the mental anguish which belongs to our nobler nature. The friend who loses a limb excites a thrill of sympathising horror, but not the same melting interest as he who has lost his favourite child; for how truly does the Holy Scripture say, 'A wounded spirit, who can bear!' As the deepest sorrows and sufferings of a martyr-the sorrows of the mind-cannot be painted, I greatly prefer to blend my sympathy for his bodily and mental torments together in my own imagination, without seeing one divided from the other in dreadful scenic representation. That seems to me what Madame de Staël calls la culte de douleur. Religion is meant to be spiritual and invisible, not depending on pictures or statues, but on the heart and understanding; therefore Lady Edith, instead of distressing her eyes with such hideous pictures, instead of pricking herself with pins like St. Veronica, and beating herself as she did with thistles, which the Bible never recommends, keeps her body in health, and her soul in humble readiness for the daily discipline which God Himself appoints her."

"I think," said Lord Iona, in his usual rattling, heedless tone, "my own life has hitherto been made to resemble a Christmas tree; my root in the earth, my head to the sky; the gay lights glittering on every leaf or branch, and toys or bon-bons enough for a carnival to enliven the whole; but the pleasures of intellect and feeling were wanting, and these now far outweigh in my estimation all others, though these are what Father Eustace wishes to deprive you of for life. Really, Anne, your obedience to that confessor has grown so implicit now that you would, if he desired you, go up to the moon on a ladder of ropes.'

"I should at least try."

"And if he asserted the very stoutest impossibilities, you would believe them to be possible. Well, if you want a testimonial to Father Eustace of your believing and doing implicitly all he desires you, refer him to my office. His legends are all pyramids reversed, resting on the smallest possible foundation."

No obvious attempt was made to dissuade Beatrice from fulfilling her promise to visit Lady Edith almost every day, but no facilities were afforded her, and a thousand little tempting excursions were planned for her, which that engagement frustrated; but when she still persisted in going, Lady Eaglescairn treated her resolution as a mere amiable weakness, a thing to be good-humouredly winked at, as it was certain to become in time a most intolerable bore. Though a carriage was at all times ready, therefore, to convey Beatrice with any party anywhere else, so that

she should explore every valley or hill within reach, and admire every old ruin or picturesque village in the county, still Heatherbrae alone seemed left always in oblivion, and no carriage ever offered itself to go there; while any passing remark these visits ever did excite, was in a tone of the most contemptuous disparagement.

That the mind of Beatrice was calm under her present ordeal cannot be imagined, yet no one could have guessed how much she really did suffer from being in constant mental opposition to all those around her who seemed in other respects so anxious that she should be pleased and happy. Complaisant by nature, she felt bound nevertheless to remain firm respecting even the most trifling word or action that involved a principle; yet to be constantly on the defensive in the society of friends was so new to her, that she felt her head at last like broken china with agitation. Beatrice felt it at times delightful beyond expression, to escape from all the party, and to proceed with her own free, springing, animated step to Heatherbrae. But that walk was not long to be taken alone, for both Sir Allan and Lord Iona had with watchful anxiety discovered the hour at which her pilgrimage usually begun, and both always happened, by a well-contrived accident, to meet her at the very same hour and on the very same spot. These two selfappointed aides-de-camps, though evidently jealous of each other, kept up a gay effervescence of small talk which so beguiled the long distance to Beatrice that her mind appeared to be on a mental railroad,

as the gay little party advanced pleasantly and rapidly along every successive subject of conversation as well as along the road.

"I hope," said Lord Iona the first time he intercepted Beatrice," that you do not prefer a misanthropical walk alone to the society of an agreeable companion."

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Certainly not, if he is agreeable," answered Beatrice in a tone of merry wilful caprice. "You seem wonderfully clever at guessing my preferences." "And some of your aversions also," added Lord Iona with a sly comic glance. "What an agreeable man Father Eustace is! I saw you looking quite ferocious at him last night when he attempted to beguile you into conversation, and how successfully you avoided him this morning; yet he is a man who never was known 'to fail in anything he undertook, and he has undertaken to make himself one day, sooner or later, your favourite confessor."

"Then I shall be the first person to defeat him. How strange the interest is that Father Eustace has always betrayed rather than acknowledged in me!" said Beatrice in a meditative tone. “He is one of the few persons I have known, by sight, at least, from infancy, and every year has caused me to distrust him more. What can he know about me?"

"As nearly as I can guess, I cannot tell; but, Beatrice," said Sir Allan with his own peculiar and rather melancholy smile, "I hope that in friendship you resemble Aladdin with the lamps in preferring old ones to new."