ntion, but her
object was defeated. The rector recognised the words at once.

"Yes, yes," he replied, impatiently; "but, Miss Furze, you know better
than that. Milton does not mean doubt whether an arithmetical
proposition is true. I question if he means theological doubt. Doubt in
that passage is nearer despondency. It is despondency taking an
intellectual form and clothing itself with doubts which no reasoning will
overcome, which re-shape themselves the moment they are refuted." He
stopped for a moment. "Don't you think so, Miss Furze?"

She forgot Mrs. Cardew, and looked straight into Mr. Cardew's face bent
earnestly upon her.

"I understand."

Mrs. Cardew had lifted her eyes from the ground, on which they had been
fixed. "I think," said she, "we had better be going."

"We can go out by the door at the end of the garden, if you will go and
bid the Misses Ponsonby good-bye."

Mrs. Cardew lingered a moment.

"I have bidden them good-bye," said her husband.

She went, and Miss Ponsonby detained her for a few minutes to arrange the
details of an important quarterly meeting of the Dorcas Society for next
week.

"What do you think of the subject of the 'Paradise Lost.' Miss Furze?"

"I hardly know; it seems so far away."

"Ah! that is just the point. I thought so once, but not now. Milton
could not content himself with a common theme; nothing less than God and
the man--mortal feud between Him and Satan would suffice. Milton is
representative to me of what I may call the heroic attitude towards
existence. Mark, too, the importance of man in the book. Men and women
are not mere bubbles--here for a moment and then gone--but they are
actually important, all-important, I may even say, to the Maker of the
universe and his great enemy. In this Milton follows Christianity, but
what stress he lays on the point! Our temptation, notwithstanding our
religion, so often is to doubt our own value. All appearances tend to
make us doubt it. Don't you think so?"

Catharine looked earnestly at the excited preacher, but said nothing.

"I do not mean our own personal worth. The temptation is to doubt
whether it is of the smallest consequence whether we are or are not, and
whether our being here is not an accident. Oh, Miss Furze, to think that
your existence and mine are part of the Divine eternal plan, and that
without us it would be wrecked! Then there is Satan. Milton has gone
beyond the Bible, beyond