length to live in and for her studies. All her other
pursuits and occupations were made to be subordinate to these, and were
by degrees completely swallowed up by them. Not that she was unaware
that there were duties which she ought to fulfil in her home and in her
father's parish, which could not be done justice to without shortening
her hours of study. She saw this plainly enough, and deplored her
neglect; but she had come to persuade herself that success in her
intellectual pursuits was the special end at which she was to aim for
the present; and she believed that her mother, at any rate, held the
same view.

And yet her conscience was not at ease on the matter. Home and parish
work which used to fall to her was either left undone or transferred to
others. "Mother," she would say, "I am so sorry not to be of more use;
I ought to help you, and to take my share of work in the parish; but
then you know how it is--you see that I have no time." Once her class
in the Sunday-school had been her delight, and the object of many an
anxious thought and earnest prayer, while each individual scholar had a
place in her heart and her supplications. But by degrees the
preparation for the Sunday lessons became irksome and too much for her
already overworked brain. She must make the Sabbath a day of absolute
rest from all mental exertion, except such as was involved in a due
attendance on the services in the house of God, which her conscience
would not allow her to absent from.

As for week-day work in the parish, such as taking her turn in visiting
the girls' day-school, undertaking a district as visitor, looking up and
tending the sick and the sorrowful in conjunction with her father and
mother, the excuse of "no time" was pleaded here also; so that she who
was once welcomed in every home in the parish, and carried peace by her
loving words and looks to many a troubled and weary heart, was now
becoming daily more and more a stranger to those who used to love and
value her. Indeed, she seldom now stirred from home, except when
snatching for health's sake a hasty walk, in which she would hurry from
the vicarage and back again along roads where she was least likely to
meet with interruption from the greetings of friends or neighbours.

Light, purer light, the light of God's truth, had indeed shone into her
heart, but that light was suffering a gradual and deepening eclipse
through the shadow cast by the idol of intellectual