r means
of laying the evidences of Charlton's innocence before the President in a
way calculated to secure his pardon. Lurton knew two Representatives and
one Senator, and he had hope of being able to interest them in the case.
He would go to Washington himself. Isa thought his offer very generous,
and found in her heart a great admiration for him. Lurton, on his part,
regarded Isabel with more and more wonder and affection. He told her at
last, in a sweet and sincere humility, the burden of his heart. He
confessed his love with a frankness that was very winning, and with a
gentle deference that revealed him to her the man he was--affectionate,
sincere, and unselfish.

If Isabel had been impulsive, she would have accepted at once, under the
influence of his presence. But she had a wise, practical way of taking
time to think. She endeavored to eliminate entirely the element of
feeling, and see the offer in the light in which it would show itself
after present circumstances had passed. For if Lurton had been a crafty
man, he could not have offered himself at a moment more opportune. Isa
was now homeless, and without a future. If you ask me why, then, she did
not accept Lurton without hesitation, I answer that I can no more explain
this than I can explain all the other paradoxes of love that I see every
day. Was it that he was too perfect? Is it easier for a woman to love a
man than a model? People are not apt to be enamored of monotony, even of
a monotony of goodness. Was it, then, that Isa would have liked a man
whose soul had been a battle-field, rather than one in whom goodness and
faith had had an easy time? Did she feel more sympathy for one who had
fought and overcome, like Charlton, than for one who had never known a
great struggle? Perhaps I have not touched at all upon the real reason
for Isa's hesitation. But she certainly did hesitate. She found it quite
impossible to analyze her own feelings in the matter. The more she
thought about it, the more hopeless her confusion became.

It is one of the unhappy results produced by some works of religious
biography, that people who copy methods, are prone to copy those not
adapted to their own peculiarities. Isabel, in her extremity of
indecision, remembered that some saint of the latter part of the last
century, whose biography she had read in a Sunday-school library-book,
was wont, when undecided in weighty matters, to write down all the
reasons, _pro_ and _con_, and