who is busy with the dry details of mere outline. The one mind was
arranged like a map, and the other like a picture. In all the system
which had been explained to her, her mind selected points on which it
seized with intense sympathy, which it dwelt upon and expanded till all
else fell away. The sublimity of disinterested benevolence,--the harmony
and order of a system tending in its final results to infinite
happiness,--the goodness of God,--the love of a self-sacrificing
Redeemer,--were all so many glorious pictures, which she revolved in her
mind with small care for their logical relations.

Mrs. Marvyn had never, in all the course of their intimacy, opened her
mouth to Mary on the subject of religion. It was not an uncommon
incident of those times for persons of great elevation and purity of
character to be familiarly known and spoken of as living under a cloud
of religious gloom; and it was simply regarded as one more mysterious
instance of the workings of that infinite decree which denied to them
the special illumination of the Spirit.

When Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary with her into her room, she seemed like
a person almost in frenzy. She shut and bolted the door, drew her to the
foot of the bed, and, throwing her arms round her, rested her hot and
throbbing forehead on her shoulder. She pressed her thin hand over her
eyes, and then, suddenly drawing back, looked her in the face as one
resolved to speak something long suppressed. Her soft brown eyes had a
flash of despairing wildness in them, like that of a hunted animal
turning in its death-struggle on its pursuer.

"Mary," she said, "I can't help it,--don't mind what I say, but I must
speak or die! Mary, I cannot, will not, be resigned!--it is all hard,
unjust, cruel!--to all eternity I will say so! To me there is no