He had hardly paid this high tribute to his sister's talent when the door opened, and Mrs. Gresley came in in a wrapper that had once been white.

"Dear James," she said, "is anything wrong? It is past one o'clock. Are you never coming to bed?"

"Minna," said her pastor and master, "I have been reading the worst book I have come across yet, and it was written by my own sister under my own roof."

He might have added "close under the roof," if he had remembered the little attic chamber where the cold of winter and the heat of summer had each struck in turn and in vain at the indomitable perseverence of the writer of those many pages.

Chapter XL

*

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.—EMERSON.

Mr. Gresley was troubled, more troubled than he had ever been since a never-to-be-forgotten period before his ordination, when he had come in contact with worldly minds, and had had doubts as to the justice of eternal punishment. He was apt to speak in after years of the furnace through which he had passed, and from which nothing short of a conversation with a bishop had had power to save him, as a great experience which he could not regret, because it had brought him into sympathy with so many minds. As he often said in his favorite language of metaphor, he "had threshed out the whole subject of agnosticism, and could consequently meet other minds still struggling in its turbid waves."

But now again he was deeply perturbed, and it was difficult to see in what blessing to his fellow-creatures this particular agitation would result. He walked with bent head for hours in the garden. He could not attend to his sermon, though it was Friday. He entirely forgot his Bible-class at the alms-houses in the afternoon.

Mrs. Gresley watched him from her bedroom window, where she was mending the children's stockings. At last she laid aside her work and went out.

She might not be his mental equal. She might be unable, with her small feminine mind, to fathom the depths and heights of that great intelligence, but still she was his wife. Perhaps, though she did not know it, it troubled her to see him so absorbed in his sister, for she was sure it was of Hester and her book that he was thinking. "I am his wife," she said to herself, as she joined him in silence, and passed her arm through his. He needed to be reminded of her existence. Mr. Gresley pressed it, and they took a turn in silence.

He had not a high opinion of the feminine intellect. He was wont to say that he was tired of most women in ten minutes. But he had learned to make an exception of his wife. What mind does not feel confidence in the sentiments of its echo?

"I am greatly troubled about Hester," he said at last.