erness of the inexperienced heart! My
Virgin Eve, which the Serpent has entered into your youthful paradise,
and you will find; alas! too late, that you have warmed an adder into
your bosom!"

"Oh, Ma, how indelicate!" giggled Anna Maria, evidently not
displeased. "If you don't mind he will hear you, and I should never be
able to look him in the face again." And therewith she looked round to
the glass door.

What more passed, Tom did not choose to hear; for he began making all
the bustle he could in the shop, merely saying to himself,--

"That flood of eloquence is symptomatic enough: I'll lay my life the
old dame knows her way to the laudanum bottle."

Tom's next business was to ingratiate himself with the young curate.
He had found out already, cunning fellow, that any extreme intimacy
with Headley would not increase his general popularity; and, as we
have seen already, he bore no great affection to "the cloth" in
general: but the curate was an educated gentleman, and Tom wished for
some more rational conversation than that of the Lieutenant and Heale.
Besides, he was one of those men, with whom the possession of power,
sought at first from self-interest, has become a passion, a species of
sporting, which he follows for its own sake, To whomsoever he met he
must needs apply the moral stethoscope; sound him, lungs, heart, and
liver; put his tissues under the microscope, and try conclusions on
him to the uttermost. They might be useful hereafter; for knowledge
was power: or they might not. What matter? Every fresh specimen of
humanity which he examined was so much gained in general knowledge.
Very true, Thomas Thurnall; provided the method of examination be the
sound and the deep one, which will lead you down in each case to the
real living heart of humanity: but what if your method be altogether a
shallow and a cynical one, savouring much more of Gil Blas than of
St. Paul, grounded not on faith and love for human beings, but on
something very like suspicion and contempt? You will be but too
likely, Doctor, to make the coarsest mistakes, when you fancy yourself
most penetrating; to mistake the mere scurf and disease of the
character for its healthy organic tissue, and to find out at last,
somewhat to your confusion, that there are more things, not only in
heaven, but in the earthiest of the earth, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy. You have already set down Grace Harvey as a hypocrite, and
Willis as a dotard. W