id, with a sudden change of subject--

"I wonder if we shall meet Forgue to-day! he gets up early now, and
goes out. It is neither to fish nor shoot, for he doesn't take his rod
or gun; he must be watching or looking for something!--Shouldn't you
say so, Mr. Grant?"

This set Donal thinking. Eppy was never out at night, or only for a few
minutes; and Forgue went out early in the morning! But if Eppy would
meet him, how could he or anyone help it?

CHAPTER XLV.

A LAST ENCOUNTER.

Now for a while, Donal seldom saw lady Arctura, and when he did,
received from her no encouragement to address her. The troubled look
had reappeared on her face. In her smile, as they passed in hall or
corridor, glimmered an expression almost pathetic--something like an
appeal, as if she stood in sore need of his help, but dared not ask for
it. She was again much in the company of Miss Carmichael, and Donal had
good cause to fear that the pharisaism of her would-be directress was
coming down upon her spirit, not like rain on the mown grass, but like
frost on the spring flowers. The impossibility of piercing the
Christian pharisee holding the traditions of the elders, in any vital
part--so pachydermatous is he to any spiritual argument--is a sore
trial to the old Adam still unslain in lovers of the truth. At the same
time nothing gives patience better opportunity for her perfect work.
And it is well they cannot be reached by argument and so persuaded;
they would but enter the circles of the faithful to work fresh schisms
and breed fresh imposthumes.

But Donal had begun to think that he had been too forbearing towards
the hideous doctrines advocated by Miss Carmichael. It is one thing
where evil doctrines are quietly held, and the truth associated with
them assimilated by good people doing their best with what has been
taught them, and quite another thing where they are forced upon some
shrinking nature, weak to resist through the very reverence which is
its excellence. The finer nature, from inability to think another of
less pure intent than itself, is often at a great disadvantage in the
hands of the coarser. He made up his mind that, risk as it was to enter
into disputations with a worshipper of the letter, inasmuch as for
argument the letter is immeasurably more available than the spirit--for
while the spirit lies in the letter unperceived, it has no force, and
the letter-worshipper is incapable of seeing that God could not
po