her reward in vanity and vexation
of spirit. But had she wedded with the purpose that the believing wife
should convert the unbelieving, or confirm the doubting, husband, what
then had been her reward? Love and honour upon earth, and an inheritance
in Heaven with Queen Margaret and those heroines who have been the
nursing mothers of the church."

Hitherto Catharine had sat upon a stone beside the priest's feet, and
looked up to him as she spoke or listened; but now, as if animated
by calm, yet settled, feelings of disapprobation, she rose up, and,
extending her hand towards the monk as she spoke, addressed him with
a countenance and voice which might have become a cherub, pitying,
and even as much as possible sparing, the feelings of the mortal whose
errors he is commissioned to rebuke.

"And is it even so?" she said, "and can so much of the wishes, hopes,
and prejudices of this vile world affect him who may be called tomorrow
to lay down his life for opposing the corruptions of a wicked age and
backsliding priesthood? Can it be the severely virtuous Father Clement
who advises his child to aim at, or even to think of, the possession of
a throne and a bed which cannot become vacant but by an act of crying
injustice to the present possessor? Can it be the wise reformer of
the church who wishes to rest a scheme, in itself so unjust, upon
a foundation so precarious? Since when is it, good father, that the
principal libertine has altered his morals so much, to be likely to
court in honourable fashion the daughter of a Perth artisan? Two days
must have wrought this change; for only that space has passed since he
was breaking into my father's house at midnight, with worse mischief in
his mind than that of a common robber. And think you that, if Rothsay's
heart could dictate so mean a match, he could achieve such a purpose
without endangering both his succession and his life, assailed by the
Douglas and March at the same time, for what they must receive as an act
of injury and insult to both their houses? Oh! Father Clement, where
was your principle, where your prudence, when they suffered you to
be bewildered by so strange a dream, and placed the meanest of your
disciples in the right thus to reproach you?"

The old man's eyes filled with tears, as Catharine, visibly and
painfully affected by what she had said, became at length silent.

"By the mouths of babes and sucklings," he said, "hath He rebuked those
who would seem