g she is shewing us pictures of her dear Child, and we look at all
the great things He did for us, one by one; and then we turn the page and
begin again."

"I see," said Isabel; and after a moment or two's silence Mistress
Margaret got up and went into the house.

The girl sat still with her hands clasped round her knee. How strange and
different this religion was to the fiery gospel she had heard last year
at Northampton from the harsh stern preacher, at whose voice a veil
seemed to rend and show a red-hot heaven behind! How tender and simple
this was--like a blue summer's sky with drifting clouds! If only it was
true! If only there were a great Mother whose girdle was of beads strung
together, which dangled into every Christian's hands; whose face bent
down over every Christian's bed; and whose mighty and tender arms that
had held her Son and God were still stretched out beneath her other
children. And Isabel, whose soul yearned for a mother, sighed as she
reminded herself that there was but "one Mediator between God and
man--the man, Christ Jesus."

And so the time went by, like an outgoing tide, silent and steady. The
old nun did not talk much to the girl about dogmatic religion, for she
was in a difficult position. She was timid certainly of betraying her
faith by silence, but she was also timid of betraying her trust by
speech. Sometimes she felt she had gone too far, sometimes not far
enough; but on the whole her practice was never to suggest questions, but
only to answer them when Isabel asked; and to occupy herself with
affirmative rather than with destructive criticism. More than this she
hesitated to do out of honour for the dead; less than this she dared not
do out of love for God and Isabel. But there were three or four
conversations that she felt were worth waiting for; and the look on
Isabel's face afterwards, and the sudden questions she would ask
sometimes after a fit of silence, made her friend's heart quicken towards
her, and her prayers more fervent.

The two were sitting together one December day in Isabel's upstairs room
and the girl, who had just come in from a solitary walk, was half
kneeling on the window-seat and drumming her fingers softly on the panes
as she looked out at the red western sky.

"I used to think," she said, "that Catholics had no spiritual life; but
now it seems to me that in comparison we Puritans have none. You know so
much about the soul, as to what is from God and what