ambition, which had
usurped for a while the place where once her Saviour reigned supreme.
And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping
the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that
remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to
extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded
victim more prostrate and exhausted than ever.

The vicar had never been satisfied with his daughter's course. Life, in
his view, was too short and eternity too near to justify any one in
pursuing even the most innocent and laudable object in such a manner as
to unfit the soul for keeping steadily in view its highest interests,
and to engross the mind and life so entirely as to shut all the doors of
loving and Christian usefulness. While acknowledging the value of
storing, cultivating, and enlarging the mind, he became daily more and
more convinced that such mental improvement was becoming a special snare
to the young and enthusiastic; beguiling them into the neglect of
manifest duty, and into a refined and subtle self-worship, which, in the
case of those who had set out on the narrow way, was changing the
substance for a shadow, and destroying that peace which none can truly
feel who rob their Saviour of the consecration of all that they have and
are to his glory.

But deeply as he deplored the change in his daughter's habits, and her
withdrawal from first one good work and then another, he had not fully
realised how it had come about, and the mischief it was doing to the
body, mind, and soul of the child he loved so dearly. It was only
gradually that she had relinquished first one useful occupation, and
then another; and circumstances seemed at the time to make such
withdrawal necessary.

Then, too, his wife's reluctance to see that, after all, she had
mistaken the path on which she should have encouraged her daughter to
travel, had led her to make as light as possible of the evil effects,
which were only too plain to others not so nearly interested in her
child's well-being. She could not bear to think that, after all,
Clara's pursuit of intellectual distinction was physically, morally, and
spiritually a huge mistake, and that she was purchasing success at the
cost of health and peace. "There was nothing seriously amiss with her,"
she would tell her husband, when he expressed his misgivings and fears;
"she only wanted a little change; that would set her up