e hour of her
greatest trial.

IX

ANTHONY CLARKE, EVANGEL

Mr. Britt was right. Mrs. Lambert was very fond of Clarke--had,
indeed, quite taken him into her heart. He was at once son and
spiritual adviser, and his wishes had the force of commands. His
bereavement could not have anguished her much more keenly had Adele
been her own daughter, and this affliction still lay like a mist
between them, preventing even a foreboding of his impending confession
of desire. Her remembrance of the beauty and high character of his
wife made Viola seem doubly the child; and so when, from time to time,
some busybody hinted at the minister's marked intimacy with her
daughter, she put the covert insinuation away with a frank word--"You
mustn't even think such a thing."

Viola, too, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, had admired
the young minister quite as deeply as Serviss imagined, and had
humbled herself before Adele as to a very wonderful lady of the
mysterious outer world, whose deportment, dress, and speech had been
sources of enlightenment; and when she passed away, the land of the
shadow became just that much richer, more complete in its dominion
over her. Almost at once Adele spoke through the vale, saying, "I am
here to help and guide."

Thus all powers of earth and heaven had combined to make Clarke the
ruler of Viola Lambert's little world. He stood between her and young
Clinton Ward and all other suitors--he absorbed her thought. She
admired his gifts, and trembled beneath the power of his dark eyes,
his magnetic hands, and especially responded to the music of his deep
voice, which was very enthralling when it took on the pleading melody
of the lover. At times he filled her with such passion of vague unrest
that life became a torment, for she was of the age when the world is
for the lover's conquest, and the cadence of love's song means most
and is least understood; and yet at times she felt a fear of him which
chilled her. She was struggling, too, with growing ambitions, and with
an expanding knowledge of the world which was beginning to make her
critical--the wonder of the child was giving place to the insight of
the woman. The wish to shake off her invisible tormentors and be like
other girls was in reality a demand for the right to be loved and
valued for her own natural self, entirely free from the touch of
spectral hands.

She was disappointed that Clarke did not understand and sympathize
w