o penitence and theological gloom, and would lead the life
of the godly but comfortless here in order that she might insure the
glories and joys of the future life, then there might be
consolation;--then it might be felt that this tribulation had been a
precious balm by which an erring soul had been brought back to its due
humility.

But Wordsworth and Thomson, though upon the whole moral poets, had done
their work. Or, if not done altogether by them, the work had been done
by the latitude which had admitted them. So that the young wife, when
she found herself breathing the free air with which her husband
surrounded her, was able to burst asunder the remnants of those cords of
fanaticism with which her mother had endeavoured to constrain her. She
looked abroad, and soon taught herself to feel that the world was bright
and merry, that this mortal life was by no means necessarily a place of
gloom, and the companionship of the man to whom Providence had allotted
her was to her so happy, so enjoyable, so sufficient, that she found
herself to have escaped from a dark prison and to be roaming among
shrubs and flowers, and running waters, which were ever green, which
never faded, and the music of which was always in her ears. When the
first tidings of Euphemia Smith came to Folking she was in all her
thoughts and theories of life poles asunder from her mother. There might
be suffering and tribulation,--suffering even to death. But her idea of
the manner in which the suffering should be endured and death awaited
was altogether opposed to that which was hot within her mother's bosom.

But not the less did the mother still pray, still struggle, and still
hope. They, neither of them, quite understood each other, but the mother
did not at all understand the daughter. She, the mother, knew what the
verdict had been, and was taught to believe that by that verdict the
very ceremony of her daughter's marriage had been rendered null and
void. It was in vain that the truth of the matter came to her from
Robert Bolton, diluted through the vague explanations of her husband.
'It does not alter the marriage, Robert says.' So it was that the old
man told his tale, not perfectly understanding, not even quite
believing, what his son had told him.

'How can he dare to say so?' demanded the indignant mother of the
injured woman. 'Not alter the marriage when the jury have declared that
the other woman is his wife! In the eyes of God she is not h