r follow Alice to
the grave than see her enter into a marriage not made for her in
heaven."

"So would I," answered Felix tremulously.

"And to make sure that any marriage is made in heaven!" mused the Canon,
speaking as if to himself, with his head sunk in thought. "There's the
grand difficulty! For oh! Felix, my son, it is not love only that is
needed, but wisdom; yes! the highest wisdom, that which cometh down
from above, and is first pure, and then peaceable. For how could Christ
Himself be the husband of the Church, if He was not both the wisdom of
God and the love of God? How could God be the heavenly Father of us all,
if He was not infinite in wisdom? Know you not what Bacon saith; 'To
love and to be wise is not granted unto man?'"

"I dare not say I am wise," answered Felix, "but surely such love as I
bear to Alice will bring wisdom."

"And does Alice love you?" asked Canon Pascal.

"I did not think it right to ask her?" he replied.

"Then there's some hope still," said the Canon, more joyously; "the
child is scarcely twenty yet. Do not you be in a hurry, my boy. You do
not know what woman is yet; how delicately and tenderly organized; how
full of seeming contradictions and uncertainties, often with a blessed
meaning in them, ah, a heavenly meaning, but hard to be understood and
apprehended by the rougher portion of humanity. Study them a little
longer, Felix; take another year or two before you fix on your life
mistress."

"You forget how many years I have lived under the same roof as Alice,"
replied Felix eagerly, "and how many women I have lived with; my mother,
my grandmother, Phebe, and Hilda. Surely I know more about them than
most men."

"All good women," he answered, "happy lad! blessed lad, I should rather
say. They have been better to thee than angels. Phebe has been more than
a guardian angel to thee, though thou knowest not all thou owest to her
yet. But a wife, Felix, is different, God knows, from mother, or sister,
or friend. God chooses our kinsfolk for us; but man chooses his own
wife; having free will in that choice on which hangs his own life, and
the lives of others. Yet the wisest of men said, 'Whoso findeth a wife
findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord.' Ay, a good wife
is the token of such loving favor as we know not yet in this world."

The Canon's voice had fallen into a low and gentle tone, little louder
than a whisper. The dim, obscure light in the cloisters sc