om "the paper" was abhorrent:
to read a sermon was a sin--to read another man's sermon was a sin
of double-dyed blackness. However, either her opinions were being
corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or
she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks
of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to
advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley
to prop her own.

Miss Adamson merely said, "Do you not underrate Mr. Eildon's
abilities?"

"I think not. If he had abilities, he would have been showing them by
this time. But of course I don't blame him: few of the Eildons have
been men of mark--none in recent times except Lord Arthur--but they
have all been respectable men, whose lives would stand inspection; and
George is the equal of any of them in that respect. As a clergyman he
would have set a good example."

Hearing a person always pitied and spoken slightingly of does not
predispose any one to fall in love with that person. Miss Garscube's
feelings of this nature still lay very closely folded up in the bud,
and the early spring did not come at this time to develop them in the
shape of George Eildon; but Mr. Eildon was sufficiently foolish and
indiscreet to fall in love with her. Miss Adamson was the only one of
the three ladies cognizant of this state of affairs, but as her creed
was that no one had any right to make or meddle in a thing of this
kind, she saw as if she saw not, though very much interested. She saw
that Miss Garscube was as innocent of the knowledge that she had made
a conquest as it was possible to be, and she felt surprised that Lady
Arthur's sight was not sharper. But Lady Arthur was--or at least had
been--a woman of the world, and the idea of a penniless man allowing
himself to fall in love seriously with a penniless girl in actual
life could not find admission into her mind: if she had been writing
a ballad it would have been different; indeed, if you had only known
Lady Arthur through her poetry, you might have believed her to be a
very, romantic, sentimental, unworldly person, for she really was all
that--on paper.

Mr. Eildon was very frequently in the studio where Miss Adamson and
her pupil worked, and he was always ready to accompany them in their
excursions, and, Lady Arthur said, "really made himself very useful."

It has been said that John and Thomas both approved of her ladyship's
summer exp